• To the optimist, the glass is half full.
• To the pessimist, the glass is half empty.
• To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
• To the marketer, the glass is a handy new special beverage container solution to your drink related problems
• To the hypnotist, the glass is just a metaphor for how you store all your fluid knowledge deep inside now…that’s right
• The NLPer just asks which glass specifically and then models your answer
• And the Persuasion Artist would just drink and then talk you in to buying them another

Want to develop the attitude of a Persuasion Skills Artist?

If you want to learn how to install the attitude, develop the skills and stay motivated to achieve massive results for both yourself and others click through and find out more about the only NLP Practitioner Course I am running in the foreseeable future.

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:

A recent email I received spurred me to write a little about dealing with subtle aggression. If you have a difficult person in your life that is never quite openly abusive but is constantly putting you down in small ways this article may help.

Subtle Aggression

People that you interact with frequently, like family members or co-workers, can easily use patronising words and phrases together that taken on an individual basis may not mean anything. But when you put all the instances together they form a subtly aggressive attack on you.

These sorts of attacks are notoriously difficult to deal with because if you get angry they will most likely respond with things like:

• “Your blowing it out of proportion.”
• “It’s only a joke.”
• “You are too sensitive”

It can be a difficult thing to deal with because that one act on its own doesn’t seem like a big thing and it only becomes so once you see it in the context of other conversations.

Here is the email that I was sent:

A Process to Tackle the Problem

Here is the process:

State Management

The first thing you need to do is keep hold of your emotions. They are doing this to get an emotional response, so let’s start by denying them that. Also by keeping hold of your emotions you are able to think and use your skills more effectively.

Here is one way I personally do this. I imagine myself as a stealthy crouching tiger just stalking my prey. I know if I keep calm and clear headed just waiting for the right moment the person that is doing the attacking is going to get seriously mauled and it will be me doing it.

I like this imagery because it gives me back the psychological edge that the person was seeking to deny me. I am now stalking my victim rather than reacting to whatever they said.

Pause

It may take you a moment to get a grip of your emotions and that is great. Just pause, ideally just look at the space between their eyebrows as you pause. By staring at this point it looks like you are making eye contact, but obviously you aren’t quite. This is good for you because not making eye contact means it doesn’t get any more intense for you. But for the person you are just about to deal with the situation is starting to ramp up.

Remember they are looking for an emotional reaction from you. What they have got is you holding their eye contact without giving them anything. If you can keep looking unemotionally at that space between the eyebrows until it feels really uncomfortable and then count slowly to ten before speaking. If you manage this, and it is easy with just a little practice, I will guarantee that the other person will start to speak again. It is almost impossible to keep that void in conversation.

Reflect the Offending Behaviour Back and Ask for an Explanation

Depending on how forceful you want to be either stop them from saying anything else or let them say whatever without responding and let them run out of steam. Then use the super redefine pattern to get to the heart of the matter. Here are a couple of examples of the whole phrase getting more extreme as we go:

I agree you want me to prove it and the issue isn’t my having to prove anything. It is about you explaining why you think I should have to justify anything to you at all. Explain to me what makes you think that is acceptable behaviour.

I agree that you need more information on how I form my opinions and the issue isn’t the information you need but how is it that you have so low self-esteem that you need to try to put me down constantly. Where did your low self-esteem come from?

I agree proof is useful and the issue isn’t about proving my point, it is about explaining why you constantly need to prove that you have no social skills. How have you managed to grow up without developing proper social skills?

Toning it Down a Bit

I agree that these examples might seem a bit extreme and the issue is not about the language and is everything about the pattern allowing you to deflect from they are talking about and point directly to the heart of the matter. And then by asking a question about that heart creates a totally different conversation that is focused on their behaviour.

And trust me this will make them squirm. Especially if you keep using the pattern as they try to get away from discussing their behaviour. My favourite way of doing this is to keep repeating the pattern but getting more extreme as I go just like the above example.

Remember I am not trying to be conciliatory here. And just because I am choosing to deal with this in an adversarial, almost confrontational manner doesn’t mean that you can’t turn this into something much more collaborative and reconciliatory for example:

I can see that proof is important to you and before we discuss that I would like you to be aware of the impact that your behaviour is having on me. Let’s discuss how you can talk to me without me feeling like I am being attacked.

You can find this and many more patterns in the international bestselling Persuasion Skills Black Book. But the key that really makes this work is the state management and emotional handling skills. The Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed course gives you emotion and state control techniques as well as a method of developing a persuasive personality that can handle stressful environments like when you are being bullied. Click Through and find out more 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.

The Persuasion Skills Black Book

Here is the email I received from Richard a reader of the Persuasion Skills Black Book:

Hi

I have a question re the first two sections in the book – Redefines and Agreement Frames. Rintu gives an example of someone whom he has worked out is 1. Self-Referential 2. Motivted by ROI etc …it strikes me that using Redefines etc are much more powerful if you have that info . How do you find that out about a person ? Does that come later in the book ? I know a small amount about Rep systems but often struggle to \’hear\’ them / work them out

Any hints ? Should I just keep reading the book ?

All replies appreciated

Richard

The Issue isn’t Finding out Material it Is About Using What You are Presented With

Here is my response:

Hi Richard,

Okay the short answer is that it is a practised skill. The easiest way to practice it is to listen to conversations that you are not directly involved with and just pick out what you can. Here is the exercise specifically for you. Watch chat shows, interviews or anything else where there is an unrehearsed, unscripted conversation. Imagine you were going to use a persuasion pattern on one of the people in the conversation, we will use the x/y redefine as the example for the minute. Listen to a little bit of the conversation and then decide how you would build what you have just heard into the pattern. The more you do this the more you will find pick up and using information from conversations easier.

Hope that helps.

Cheers

Rintu

Of course if you want countless examples of me taking what is offered by an audience and folding that back on them in terms of a language pattern you can read the transcript of a three hour persuasion skills workshop. This is what makes Persuasion Skills on Steroids Deconstructed my most powerful course ever. But don’t take my word for it. Find out what others think about the course when you click through here: