These Are Not the Response You Were Looking For

A typical stalling tactic for police officer is to start asking questions about you, where you are going and what you are doing. Sometimes they are obviously interested for a specific reason and often, like in this case it gives him some breathing space to think about what to do next.

You can read the previous parts of this story here:

 Part One – Setting the Scene

Part Two – Using Social Status

Part Three – Building Propulsion Systems

The reason this poor young officer went into asking these questions was because he could see his original objectives slipping away from him and he had nothing to replace them with. He had originally intended to speak to me about my driving and then issue me with a ticket.

Since I was not admitting guilt, in fact clearly stating the exact opposite and subtly asking for evidence either way the officer had a problem. The problem that I had was I didn’t have a way of getting him to a win / win situation. I had to find a way of guiding him to letting me go but feeling like he was in charge, it was his decision and he could justify it to his mentor who was still sat in the police car.

We were stalling and the officer started asking me general questions whilst we both tried to think of a way out of the situation. I normally refuse to answer anything unless it has direct relevance to whatever investigation the police are conducting. But in this case I didn’t really want the escalation or to annoy the officer unnecessarily. Staying in my one down position I started sharing information about my address, car, driving licence and insurance.

It was a cold night and I had got out of the car just wearing a tee shirt. The officer seeing me shivering was the one thing that allowed me to take complete control of the situation, talk the officer into great trance and load in a stack of post hypnotic suggestions.

Behavioural Flexibility, Being Able to Seize Golden Nuggets

Up to this point my plan was to keep stacking more and more implied work on the officer until he crumbled and decided that it was not worth the effort of saving face.

I had already subtly told him that he would have to take me to court because I was not admitting guilt. I had suggested he needs more than just his witness testimony and would have to apply for all the CCTV footage in the area. I was lining up to get him to call out the council to test the time differences between the various lights. And I was thinking of ways of getting him to check the car and breathalyse me, all of which would be fine but would just increase the paperwork, time and stress he would have to go through. All of this would work but it wasn’t going to get me to my poker game anytime soon.

But he then gave me a golden nugget that just allowed me to shortcut my plans and give him a way out straight away. The thing I was having difficulty with at this point I could not see how to let the officer to back away gracefully from the situation.

This is an important factor in persuasion. When you want someone to do something just giving them the motivation is sometimes not enough. You also need to remove obstacles and make the path obvious. Remember the propulsion systems we have discussed in the last article? I had put loads of pain in his way but I just hadn’t found a way for him to turn round and point him in the other direction yet. I was pretty sure the officer just wanted the situation to go away but just didn’t quite know how to make that happen. Nor did I until…

The officer saw me shiver and he said, “Why don’t you sit in your car and I will talk to you through the window?” As soon as he said it I was laughing on the inside. I knew I had won, I was getting away to play poker and everything was right with the world.

Interrupting the Click Whirr Response

An NLP Technique that has a lot of confusion associated with it is Pattern Interrupts. It is a really simple thing though. We do a lot of things unconsciously, on auto pilot if you will. Imagine the routine you go through from waking through to ending up at your workplace. How much of that do you do consciously?

In this particular case the officer probably had a clear idea of how the encounter was supposed to go, he may even have talked it through with his mentor. And all of a sudden I was not acting as planned. As a result he already had a level of confusion and uncertainty. He had now idea just how much I was about to deepen the confusion and completely interrupt his way of looking at the world.

Depending on the degree that it happens when people have their pattern interrupted they go into inside themselves to try and understand what is happening. From a persuasion perspective that going inside can be a great trance state to use.

Jedi Mind Tricks

As soon as he suggested that I should sit in the car I switched my social status from one down, to one up. I stood straighter, took on a more authoritative stance and I took a more commanding tone. Here is approximately what I said, “I’m sorry officer I cannot allow you to do that. I would not be able to live with you being run over standing in the middle of the road whilst talking to me. This is what we will do I will get my jacket from the car and then we can stand on the pavement and we can discuss the matter there. Just wait here”

You can see just in the words just how commanding I was and just how many instructions I issued out to him in just a few lines. The “just wait here” command was my test. If he complied I knew I would be able to give him post hypnotic suggestions.

I got my jacket from the car whilst carefully watching to see if the officer stayed in the middle of the road waiting for me. I needed to time this quite well, if I took too long the trance would break and he would be back to himself. But I also wanted to keep it going for as long as I could because it reinforces his compliance.

I got my jacket, put it on returned to the officer and led him to pavement whilst saying something like, “Come with me on to the pavement where you can be safe.” I don’t know if this actually happened this way but I seem to remember gently grabbing him by the elbow and actually leading him to the pavement.

Either way you can imagine how this young officer was struggling with the situation. In seconds he not only completely lost control of the situation but he is now following my commands.

Let’s make sure we are clear about the mechanics of this approach. Whilst I have taken charge I am also suggesting very reasonable commands. If I were making unreasonable demands I have no doubt that he would break out of the trance and come back at me. It is very difficult to not become compliant when the suggestions you are being given are things you would do anyway. This is the pacing part of pacing and leading. The next step was to lead the officer in to letting me go.

Process Driven Post Hypnotic Suggestions

Once on the pavement I said to the officer something like,

“Now we can safely discuss the issue I would suggest that you need to check out the details that I gave about me. So you could just go back to your car and check my details against PNC (Police National Computer). That way you can find out everything about me checks out and you can discuss with your colleague the best approach to letting me go on my way and we can get this over and done with quickly. That would be good wouldn’t it?”

The officer nodded and I sort of shooed him off in the direction of his car saying that I will wait for him on the pavement. It was really difficult not to laugh as I watched him shuffle off towards his car still in deep thought trying to work out where exactly the situation reversed on him and he found himself following my suggestions. The most difficult thing in Hypnotic Persuasion is not to laugh whilst doing it.

If you reread that paragraph again you will notice that I again am making suggestions that seem reasonable. I give him specific step by step instructions that are easy to follow.

I also gave him stuff that I know he would feel good about. It was obvious that he was starting to feel out of his depth and I was giving him the opportunity to take time out as well as consult with his mentor. This should be an emotional release for him. And in the middle of it I am suggesting all my details will check out and that they will be discussing how best to let me go.

I think it can come as no surprise that he let me go. After a brief discussion with his mentor he came back; because everything checked out and I was being so open and honest he thought he should just ask me to be careful when approaching traffic lights and let me get on my way.

Any other day of the week I might of asked him how he came to that decision but I was late for my poker game.

Let me cut to the chase. I am giving you an opportunity that I have not opened up for two years. Let me explain why I am doing this.

My publisher is pushing me for two new books. One I promised him almost two years ago and the other is a sequel to The Persuasion Skills Black Book that many people have been chasing me to write. Both are well over half way but I am having trouble completing them. I need to lock myself away, get my head down and just focus on completing these two books.

My way of making this happen is to open up the Advanced Persuasion Patterns course. My group of students and graduates are great and they have been with me for a long time. I need an influx of new students to keep me generating exciting new material to put in to these books.You can be party of this community. Students and graduates of this course get access to the private Facebook group where we can discuss advanced concepts and integrating new material.

Normally I keep the numbers static and you have to join a waiting list for spaces to open up. It has been over two years since I have had a big intake. I am opening the doors until 9:30 am BST on Monday June  3rd or I hit maximum capacity and then the doors will close again. Click through and find out about the deal here.

Conversations Using NLP Reframing

One of the things I advocate in The Persuasion Skills Black Book is practising in live conversations. The game is to take the pattern of the day and use it as many times as possible in one conversation.

One of the things I have noticed is that doing this, particularly with the redefine pattern, gives you two options. Firstly to take the conversation to where ever you want it to go. The second is to hold the conversation to what you want to discuss.

Tom sent me an email reminding me of this and putting this down as a process in a really clear structure. But before I show you the email I need to add a danger warning. We don’t know what technique Tom used nor the whole circumstances so it could easily be something that was very beneficial for the client.

There are some things you should always with things like medical conditions which Tom may well have covered but just didn’t tell us about in his email below. So let’s first deal with the genius way Tom approaches the redefine and then can I ask you to stay with this article to understand how much potential there is to do harm given this set of circumstances on face value.

Just Give Me Five Minutes

Here is the email in full:

Developing the NLP Language Pattern

So let me deconstruct this into a process. All Tom is saying:

“The issue isn’t what you are saying. The issue is what I want to discuss. Is what I want to discuss important to you?..Give me five minutes.”

The last sentence is an embedded command. The first part is a redefine pattern. Tom uses this as many times as he wants to hold the client on the health issue. This is pretty good, particularly since Tom is doing this on the fly, and because we are not in the pressure of the moment we can make it even better.

Before we do though, lets clear some stuff up about convincer strategies. Generally people have to go through things a few times before they “get it”. Think about how many times you have to do something before you know that you are good at it. This number can range from none through a fixed number of times right up to never or infinity. For the majority of people this number is three. That is why you will see things repeated in cycles of three. Listen to any great speech and you will hear the rule of three in play. If you watch the daily news you will notice that they tend to give you a headline, later they go through the details and then end with a summary. That is the rule of three working and what Tom is getting at as a convincer strategy. I am not sure it is a useful belief to hold but I do think it is a really useful piece of information to know. Meanwhile, back at the pattern:

First we can validate the client by acknowledging that we have heard what he has to say. That would be an agreement frame and would look like, “I agree you are in a hurry,” or, “I can see you are late for a meeting.”

And then we can go into the redefine pattern, “The issue isn’t being late the issue is about your health.” This is as straight forward as Tom has it above.

Now to drive this home Tom asks a closed question; “Are you concerned about your health?” or “Is your health important to you?” You can see the danger of this question in that the client does at one point answer the question by saying no. For the client in the moment the issue is one of priority and the meeting at that point in time is more important to him.

If you changed the question to one that presupposes a belief that you want to install you will create extra leverage that you can use. For example, “How important is health to you?” or “What is important to you about your health?” You then pause for the answer and end it with the embedded command.

So now the whole phrase would look like,

“I can see that you are running late and the issue isn’t the meeting. It is about your health. How important is your health to you? (Pause, let them answer and then use their answer to build into the embedded command e.g. ) I can see how xy and z can affect you. Give me five minutes and I can give you something that can help.”

The Dangerous Bit

The pattern and the opportunity for learning that Tom has given us is brilliant. And there is something we should also look at is ecology. Tom may well have done all this but left it out of his description as his focus is to discuss the patterns. But it does give me an opportunity to discuss this really important aspect of persuasion.

For the NLP jargon junkies out there ecology is the NLP posh term for saying before making any intervention let’s just make sure that it is good for the client. I think this is a really serious issue for any persuasive personality. If you have the ability to dramatically alter people’s beliefs should you not make sure what you are doing is good for them?

Tom doesn’t mention the technique he used or how he checked it would be good for his client. I suspect it was all fine and I am just pointing it out because it is a good learning opportunity for us and not checking ecology could be really dangerous for you, your client or both.

How to Find Out More

The redefine and lots of other patterns are fully explored in the Persuasion Skills Black Book. You can find it on Amazon here in the UK or on Amazon.Com But if you want to develop a powerful persuasive personality and understand hypnotic language patterns at such a deep level that you are spontaneously creating them in conversations you will want to click through here:

Reshaping Reality Using Hypnotic Language

One of the great things about language is that we can use it to frame our reality. Imagine how great a persuasion tool you have if just by the very words that you use you reshape reality around you. I suspect some readers won’t believe that it makes sense, it is possible or that it is easy to do. In this video you will see me doing it as part of teaching a bunch of student how to do it.

This video is almost an hour and half long and this is just the start of the material we discuss. You can imagine just how powerful the rest of it is. If you want an opportunity to see the rest of the video keep an eye on this article page or sign up to my list. I will be releasing details on how you can get a copy in the next few days.

Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed

Alternatively if you want to start studying how you can apply these concepts to everyday persuasion situations then click through and find out more here.

The Power of Shifting Tenses

What Shaz has done is used the past to pace the reader. He is building a connection between what he wants you to do to things that you have done in the past. That is a fairly common way of pacing people and I am sure you will recognise using this approach yourself. For example it often happens naturally when meeting new people. A common tactic is to look for commonality like commons places you have lived, worked or holidayed in.

In this particular case Shaz is making a direct link, learning one thing is like learning another thing and look at the incredible benefits you got from learning to XYZ.

Shaz then goes into the present connecting the new things he wants you to learn and then out to the future to build motivation. This is all great stuff and I would do it slightly differently.

Outcomes are Key with NLP Techniques

Shaz has made a great attempt at putting together a whole slew of patterns and he should be proud of this. The best part of this is once you start seeing the underlying patterns you will naturally start creating sequences like this naturally and in the moment. I suspect this is where Shaz’s pattern came from and that is impressive work. Now that we have this here is how I would start refining it.

I am going to assume that the intention is to motivate the recipient to learn some powerful hypnotic language. In which case I might still start with a metaphor from the past and then go out to benefits from the future to apply to the current situation. An example of that might be:

That is just me taking some of the ideas Shaz started with and just playing around with them. I don’t think I would use this in written form and is seems a little clunky. But to open a course on hypnotic language, it needs a little work but the core of the idea I think is pretty solid.

More than Switching Tenses

Have a couple of scans through the paragraph again. You will find a whole lot more in there from embedded commands through sequences of internal representations and how I use referential indexes. See what you spot and feel free to leave a comment or two below or on the facebook page about what you found.

One of the key ways of learning things is through a process of modelling. This is how you learn to walk and talk and do hundreds of other skills that you are extremely proficient at. Many people, Shaz included are dramatically improving their persuasion skills by paying close attention to the hypnotic language patterns they are finding in my material and then practising with it.

My most powerful course to date is the Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed because it takes you through the modelling process and you get to see hypnotic language patterns several times over from multiple different perspectives. This means you learn as a student, as an observer and through looking at the situation through my eyes as well as applying the skills to your own life. You can find out more about the programme here.

Shaking People Out of Trance

People are hypnosis machines. They flit from trance to trance. If you are not sure about this spend a few moments watching people on the streets in the middle of any large town. What you will see is people going about their business almost completely oblivious to their surroundings.

One important area of hypnotic persuasion is getting people out of the trance they are in and into the trance that you want them in. One great way of doing this is called pattern interrupts. The theory is simple.

When something so completely outside of your normal experience happens it often takes a few moments for you to work out how to act. And in those few seconds you are open and suggestible to a new direction.

Learn to Pattern Interrupt

Here is comedian Jack Vale just pattern interrupting for comedy effect. Watch the video because it is really funny but also notice how many of the people just slip into trance. In particular watch the guy at 1.35 As a hypnotic persuader at that point you could have taken this guy anywhere.

But How Useful is a Pattern Interrupt?

In the Persuasion Skills Black Book you will read about a particular circumstance where a pattern interrupt saved my life. Here is an article where a pattern interrupt allowed me lead a complete stranger out to some odd places. That little pause between thoughts is a great place to place some imaginative suggestions. Here is the article

If you want to find more about a strategic approach to hypnotic persuasion skills then the Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed is a great place to start. Click though and find out more here.