Lifewriting Live 1-24-21: The Art of Persuasion

Hello there. This is Steve Barnes with Life Writing Live. We're signing in today and this is the first time I think I've been able to make it exactly at 12 noon. I'm going to be trying to do that from now on, but please, please, you know, bear with me. I'm still relearning how to use the technology. I tried to do something that was more complicated. It allowed me to stream to multiple locations. But as a result of doing that, I wasn't able to communicate directly to people using the chat. So I prefer the chat. I really like being able to connect with you guys. So let me know if you're there. Let's see. Hi there. Do that. And so if you're there, just sign in, let me know who's there. So we know that the chat is working. So, you know, today what I like to do here is I like to talk about everything that's going on in my life and the way that I use the different principles that I've been talking about to the degree that that is a useful thing. I'm hoping that you'll share with friends. Hi, Tom. I'm hoping that you're, you're, you'll share with friends. Let me know what it is that I can do for you. Amy Rodriguez. Hello. Happy Sunday. Happy Sunday. Right back to you. And today I wanted to focus. I'm open to answering any questions that you have, but I wanted to focus on something that I hear a lot right now. Especially I hear it in times of stress. I hear it from a lot of highly politicized people. They say something to the effect of, I can't get these idiots to change their minds. Logic is useless. I try arguing with these people and I can't change their minds. And what people don't realize when they say that is they are the problem. They are the problem. They're using exactly the wrong tool. They're using it in the wrong way. That the thing that they're saying is actually tells the story of why they're not capable of communicating and not capable of convincing. Now we're at a period in our history where I think the capacity to communicate clearly and to convey a feeling, to convey a position, to change minds, is of critical importance. So while understanding that anything I say is limited by my own ego, the limitations of my intelligence, limitations of my experience, my wisdom, I'm going to present as clearly as possible framework for facilitating change. And it's a really powerful one. And I tested it. The biggest way that I tested it was at the beginning of the summer, when there was a COVID lockdown, Jason became homebound, and we had to make a choice. You know, what do we do over summer vacation? Do we work with academics, academic subjects? What can we do to help him? Because our entire intent was, of course, to prepare him to not need us anymore, to prepare him to be a young man. And in the midst of all of the stress that was going on, the question of, how can we do this? How can we do this most efficiently and effectively became a really important concern. Well, I was doing research, and I did a lot of research into the question, how do I. How do you help people become what it is that you want them to be? Which is very much the same as how do you get yourself to do the things that you want yourself to be? And I've done a lot of research on this over time, and I'm convinced that it's not a matter of doing more stuff. It's a matter of doing certain things in a certain sequence that when you do that, you get much better results. It's a little bit like you don't have new numbers. Oh, Kathy o'. Donohue. Absolutely. Hi, hon. Just been a long time since I've seen your name. I hope that you're doing fine. It's really, really great to see people here. It's not that a typewriter doesn't have new characters. When you learn to write, it's not like you're discovering new letters of the Alphabet. You're learning how to use the letters that are already there more efficiently and effectively. It's not even that you're using new words most of the time is you're using the words that you know more efficiently and effectively. So the same thing is true with physical skills. You're not developing new muscle fibers. Most of the time. You're coordinating the ones you have. And in communicating with people, it's usually not using new, different skills. Hi, Becky. Usually not using different skills in the skills you already have. It's using the right skills at the right time in the right sequence. So what I'm going to present to you is the program that started making an enormous difference when we started doing things in this way and thinking about them in this way, it made a gigantic difference in our communication with Jason. It's made a real difference in my communication with myself. Now, the truth is that I can't do this all the time with everybody. Hi, James. I can't do this all the time with everybody because I don't have it all at unconscious competence. So my discussion today is going to be taking a look at these things and I might write them into the comments just so that you got a written down version of it as well. I posted something on it on my timeline today, so you can find that, but it's going to be related to that. Hi, from Massachusetts. Nice to see you, says Janet Katherine Johnston. It is good to see you too, Janet. I'm so glad that you could be here. And I'm going to be trying to be here every Sunday at noon answering any questions that you have, if there's anything that I'm saying or anything that I am or that I have done that is of interest to you, whether positively or negatively. And Joshua Todd James says, boom. Or as Bitch Putin would say, blam. So it's good to see you. So let's kind of go in now. Where I got this from is from Robbins Madonna's training. It's the persuasion framework and it's seven steps. And as a mnemonic device, I always like to try. Knowledge is generally useful when you can connect it to something that you already know. So you have to take a piece of knowledge and connect to what you already know. And there are only a few things that are hardwired into the human nervous system. Apparently things like fear of falling, fear of loud noises, fear and love and anger seem to be pretty closely wired into the human nervous system and. And other things are connected to those things. So I believe it's the Jesuits who say that you need to have a structure of some kind that you know, and then any additional pieces of information you connect to that structure. And so I connected it, I wanted to connect it with the Yogic chakras, the seven, seven conceptual energy centers used in, in yoga, in yoga disciplines. And they fit very nicely because this was all about how can I remember what to do if I'm trying to persuade someone? I'm in the middle of an argument, what do I do to create change? It fits so well that I think that if you will allow me to stretch definitions just a little bit, I think it'll be easier to remember. So the seven steps, the seven chakras, Muladhara, Svadasana, Manipura, Anahata, Vishati, Anja, and Sasara. That is survival, sexuality, physical power, emotion, communication, intellect, and spiritual transcendence. Those are the seven levels. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at the persuasion framework from that point of view. Good people can win arguments if they're Good at arguing, not if they're good morally. You can be good morally and be terrible at winning arguments. You can be right and a nice guy and everything else and be terrible at winning arguments. You really can. So the question is, what are you good at? If you're good at persuasion, you're going to be more effective. Marketers, salespeople, preachers, politicians, therapists, parents, all must be good at persuasion because that's what you're doing. You're saying, this path of life is superior to that one, this product is superior to that one, this way of acting is superior to that one. You have to persuade people. So this is about how can we be good at persuasion, the specific thing which is so valuable in helping our families in, you know, selling or marketing any kind of product, in convincing ourselves to change behaviors, to be able to sway, to help our friends when they're feeling down and they need to get out of emotional traps, to be able to lead. You know, if you're going to be able to manage these, these skills are critical. This is a way of looking at it. And I believe it might be the most powerful way that I've ever encountered. So let's take a look at the seven steps. So the first step, remember Muladhara core survival, the first step is you have to understand the world of the person you're talking to. I'm going to write that in. Understand number one. Number one, understand their world. If you do not pause to understand their world, you do not respect them enough to be able to influence them. You, you do not deserve to be able to influence them because you were not willing to take the time to understand where they were coming from in the first place. Now everything that everyone does is a matter of moving away from pain toward pleasure, attempting to enhance survival. That is, that's at the core of what it is that we are. It is possible for people to accept pain in order to accomplish a long term goal. And that's called discipline. It's called being an adult. It is possible for people to even give up their lives for a cause that is bigger but that's they've associated their ego with that larger thing that literally to not do the thing that they're doing would cause more pain than they perceive death would cause. That is a wholly extraordinary thing. And the people who have done that, the people who have accepted martyrdom, change the world. And we honor them and we remember them for centuries because of the fact that it is so unusual. So if you start, you know, you see somebody having a behavior Taking a position, doing things that you want to change. The first thing you have to understand is what does the world look like to them? Why did they do this? And if your answer is because they are an idiot, then you automatically drop yourself in the category of someone who does not deserve to influence them. Because nobody wants to be treated that way. And on some level, they know that's what you think they know that's what you think. No matter how much you smile, no matter how polite your language, they know that you're thinking idiot. And they will shut you down because no one will voluntarily do anything that increases the overall pain in their lives. And if they think they know that you think they're an idiot, why should they trust you in any way, shape or form? So you have to start with that. That's what is their world, what is the foundation of their world, what is the map of their existence. You understand that if you're sales or marketing, it's a matter of you understand the person that you're going to present to. You understand their needs, their hopes, their dreams, their finances. The more you understand about them, the easier it is to communicate with them. So it should be self evident. That is the kind of thing that everybody should pick up on really, really fast. But unfortunately, that's not what happens. People really do think that you can have contempt for somebody and you're supposed to be able to blow them over with your logic. Doesn't work, does it? So if it doesn't work and you can look at your life and you realize, you know, in a highly emotionalized situation, logic does not work. You have to establish, you have to establish connection first. If that is the observed behavior, that is an observed reality. But you continue to try to logic excited people out of their positions, that's on you. That is your problem, that is your failing. It's not about them. They were not, they're saying, they're no resistant clients, just inflexible therapists. The same thing is going to be true here to the degree that you will take responsibility. You're the one who wants to convince them, right? Are you willing to take responsibility? If you are, I got something for you. If you're not, if it's, well, they weren't smart enough to do what I told them to do. That's your immaturity. So first step is that understand their world. The second step, number two is build rapport. Write that down. Build rapport and get leverage. Okay? Beep. So rapport, connecting that to the second chakra, sexuality, you know, Obvious connection, right? Rapport, you know, you're breathing in the same patterns, hearts beating as one, bodies moving together. The beast with two backs. Same thing is true between two human beings. You get into sync with them, you know, it's understanding their world is one thing, connecting with them is another. When you connect to them and you are moving with them, you are convincing them that you're like them, they will start to drop their barriers. So if you have a horrible political disagreement with somebody, you don't start with the political disagreement, you start by connecting with. What are the, the terms that you're using to define things? You know, what do you agree on? Nice day to day, you know, how about those Dodgers, you know, whatever it is, you build rapport first. You get them to believe you care first, that you are like them first. Disciplines like neuro linguistic programming have a lot of stuff on achieving rapport, but so do books like how to Win Friends and Influence People. There's a ton of information out there. This is if you're trying to convince people, if you're trying to motivate people, if you're trying to persuade people, the responsibility is on you to be a better persuader, not on them to just do what it is that you think they should do. So that's the third thing. Once you've got sufficient rapport with them, then you can get leverage. The leverage is what do they want? What do they want? You can't get someone to change their behavior for your reasons. They have to change the behavior for, for their reasons. You have to know what they want from life. You have to know how they have motivated, sorry, they have motivated themselves in the past, in previous instances. Once you understand what their recipe is for making a decision, for motivating themselves, then you have the chance of getting into that stream. Once you understand their world, once you genuinely care about them and you do not fake this, the smile, the happy smile on your face, the lies. Oh yeah, I respect you and you're really thinking, you idiot, it's not going to work. Assume that they can read your mind. Assume that people can read your mind and you will always be ahead of the game. It's much easier to stay honest. So you build rapport and you get leverage. The third step is connected to Manipura. That's power and physical mastery. You break their pattern. Here I can connect it in terms of mnemonics because the easiest way to break somebody's pattern is to change their physical behavior. Now there are three ways. When somebody is heading into a negative emotional spiral Depression, anger, stuff like that. Emotions are created by combination of three different things. What we focus our attention on, the language that we use and the way we use our bodies. So if you're having an argument with somebody, you might say, let's talk while we walk. And you go out and you take a walk, you change their physical movement. You change the way they breathe, their muscle tension, their posture. Okay? If you do that, you change. You're breaking the chain. Because anger and fear and these things have a physiological basis. They have a connection, which is why lie detectors work, because they're, you know, galvanic skin response and muscle tension and, you know, heartbeat rate and pupil dilation and skin temperature. And all those different things relate to stress. So if you change the physiology, you're changing the stress. If you change the stress, the thing that they're afraid of changes. The fear diminishes. If the fear diminishes, their anger goes away. And now you've got two people who can communicate with each other. So you break their pattern. That's number. Number four or number three. Let me edit that. Boom. Number three. Boop. Okay, good. All right, so number four. Number four is you have to define the problem in solvable terms. Now, this is critical. If you don't believe that there is an answer that is usable for you, you're not going to try it. So if I say. If I say to a child. If you say to a child, we need you to get better grades, and their belief is, I'm not smart enough to get better grades, you must break that belief before you can get them to do the work. Because all they're saying is, I don't believe I'm smart enough. That means if I try harder, all that's going to happen is my feelings are going to get hurt. Because right now I'm not giving it my best. So I'm not running right into the real reality that I've got nothing between my ears. On the other hand, if you can convince them that the problem is not that they don't have the capacity, the problem is that they don't spend enough time and energy focused on their homework. Changing the amount of time and energy you put into your homework is doable, that's a solvable thing. It's like, oh, if I put more time and energy into this, I can get better results. Okay, Somebody says, I don't have time to write. And I say, okay, but if you just write one sentence a day, you can write a book in a year. Well, how does that work? And explain how that works. So can you write a sentence a day? Well, they can't honestly say that. They can't, not if they say also they want to be a writer. You know, people will often, you know, spend an hour arguing why they don't have time to do something that would have taken them 60 seconds. It's fascinating to watch the way people's feelings fear will distort their logic. I'm afraid that I can't write, or I'm afraid that I won't succeed, or I'm afraid that I'll succeed at a bare level and I will starve because I have these beliefs that say I can't or I shouldn't or I mustn't. So you have to define the problem in a way that they say, oh, yeah, I can't do this, but I can do this over here. Let me try that. You know, if you think, okay, somebody says, I want to. I want to play in the NBA, But I can't do that because average height in the NBA is 6 foot 3, and I'm only 5 foot 9. So it's not possible. On the other hand, if you find out that Spud Webb is, what, five, six, something like that, and can win a slam dunk contest, then you're changing the question. Is it possible for a person under 6ft to be in the NBA? Well, yeah. There are actually a lot of people in the NBA under six feet. Well, how much of what they're doing is something that is trainable? That's an interesting question. That's a different question than, I can't play in the NBA unless I'm over six feet tall. It is. Well, if I'm not over six feet tall, I still have to be able to compete with them. I have to have this amount of explosiveness in my movement. How much of that explosiveness is trainable? That's technology. It's not, I can't be over 6ft tall, which is just, you know, kind of arena without growth hormone shots. You're probably correct. But can you learn to have more explosiveness in your movement? Absolutely. That's why God made plyometrics. There are lots of coaches that specialize in that. Might you still not be able to get over that? Possibly not. I will tell you something, though, and this is the honest truth that one of my belief systems, and I'm not saying this is a fact, I'm saying this is a belief system. So I'm aware that I'm. That this is something that I have faith in as opposed to something I can prove logically, it is that you. You cannot have a goal that you can hold continuously in your head with passion over time, that you cannot find a way to bring into fulfillment. That is my belief. I have seen that to be true often enough that I am willing to take a stand there. Is it absolutely true? I'm willing to take a look at almost any goal and find a way. In other words, if you can't stand on the moon, it's the 19th century, you can't fly to the moon. Can you study the moon? Can you satisfy the urge that made you want to do it the first place? Can you become the world's greatest expert on the moon? Given the technology, the knowledge of the time, people, adults have to find ways to take the goals they had as children and satisfy those goals in some way with the lives as they are now. Sometimes that requires being flexible. That is, you know, is that unfortunate? I don't know if it's unfortunate. It's the truth. We have to be flexible. You know, I. When I said I wanted to be a martial artist, I guess the kid part of me wanted to be able to beat up anybody. Is that the case? No, but I. What I can say is that I'm better than I would have been had I never trained. You know, I know more about myself in that arena. I could do better in that arena. If you talk to world champions, they all know they can be beat, and they all get beat if they stay in the game long enough. Does that mean that they were never champions? Does that mean they did not fulfill their childhood dreams? A person could say, my dream was something that no human being could actually do. Therefore, the idea that I can do anything that I keep my mind to is false. I would say that this. They chose to be inflexible, and they have denied themselves a life of joy. But that's my position on it. Not something I'm saying as reality. In the same way that I think that the Earth circles the sun, that the sun will come up tomorrow, it's not a matter of physics. It is a matter of the way I think human psychology interacts with. With reality. So that's a useful belief and it helps us to look at any. At the possibility, any problem we have, there is a way to make it real. I may or may not be able to figure it out, but that's on me. It's not about reality. It's about the fact I didn't have the flexibility, I didn't have the perception. I Didn't have the time, I didn't have the resources, but it's on me. I want the responsibility for my happiness, my success to be on me. That means that I have to take responsibility for my failures. I don't get to blame the world. I don't get to blame the world. I have to take responsibility. An extraordinary number of the people who I respect most in the world took that level of responsibility. My beloved karate instructor, Steve Muhammad has a philosophy. The concept of defeat does not exist in my fighting philosophy. I will find a way or make one. Does that mean he won every match? Does that mean he's accomplished every goal in his life? No. But you don't think that he has accomplished much more, been much better, because he had that belief. So it's while not being nonsensical and not being foolish, it is believing in yourself enough to believe that there is a way, if you can find it. So let's go back over the first four steps really quickly. The first one is, it's in the comments. One, you understand their world, you got to understand their world. You develop rapport with them. A heart space connection, a real connection of you and I are on the same page, sufficient that they will drop their guard enough to tell you what really motivates them, what their leverage is. In other words, if Jason comes to me and says I want a new PlayStation, all I have to do is then say, okay, in order for you to get the PlayStation, you're going to have to do these things that I wanted you to do anyway. Every time you do one of those things, you I will give you a certificate. And when you've got 10 of those certificates, you get your PlayStation. So now his motivations, I've got leverage on him. His motivations are inducing him to do the things that I want him to do. Number three, you have to break their patterns. Break their patterns. As one person said, kill the monster while it's small. That if you know that somebody has a pattern, first they begin to get a little irritated and then they start talking in a particular way. And then they start stalking around the house and they get angry and angry and it leads to them drinking. And after they're drinking, they lose total control and then they beat their kids. But you know that the earliest steps of this death spiral are just, they're starting to talk a particular way, they're starting to move a little bit differently. If you can break the pattern at that point, if you can kill the monster while it's small, you can keep it from Getting to the extreme. So that's the thing, you stop it at the, at the, at the, you cut the tree down when it's just a sprout. You don't wait until it's an oak and say, oh, I didn't have an, I don't have an ax. You become, you use sensory awareness, pattern recognition. You watch what is the pattern they go through before they get to this massive negative result and you crush it when it's just getting started. Sometimes just making them laugh will do it. But you change their physiology, you change their focus, you change the language that they're using. You break the pattern. Okay, the fourth step is you have to define it in solvable terms. The person has to believe that if they take these actions it will bring them more pleasure than pain. Now this is really interesting in terms of long term goal. Like say you have a goal, you want to be a best selling writer. What you really want is to see how close you can become to being a best selling writer. In other words, I would say that's the way to phrase it. If I give it everything I've got, how close to that can I get? And if I know that I've never even met a writer, then I may not have any idea about the steps I need to take. So it doesn't feel like any actions I take could possibly have any impact on this. But if the first step is meet some writers, then I say, oh, how can I meet some writers? I can go to science fiction convention or mystery convention or romance convention and meet writers and listen to writers. Or I can go on YouTube and see interviews with writers. I can pick up magazines and see articles and interviews with writers. And I can buy books by writers about writing and their path as a writer and I can start to study them. So I can see, well, what does it take to really be a writer? You have to have a belief that the actions you're taking will decrease the pain in your life. Life. So once you've decided what the steps are, that will lead you in that direction. Another thing that you, that is very useful to do is find a way to take joy in the steps themselves. See, I could get hit by a meteor tomorrow. So if, if my satisfaction in life is based on completing projects and getting a particular response from the outside world, then what I'm doing is I'm saying I'm not going to be happy tomorrow or this week or this month, or even maybe this year, but eventually down the road someplace I'm going to be happy because I'M going to get this result from the world. You are cheating yourself of all those moments of happiness. Because if I'm writing and I can find, how do I take pleasure in writing right now? How do I take pleasure in working out right now? How do I get pleasure in the discipline to control my body right now? How can I take pleasure in this? How can. How can I take pleasure in that? You want to set yourself up so that every day is a success. So since the Dalai Lama said that the meaning of life is to seek joy, if that's true, then you win as soon as you're happy. You win when you're happy. So it's not achieve so you can be happy, it's be happy and then set out on the path of achievement. This stuff is all connected. Stuff all connected. So the fifth step, which is connected to Vichidi in the throat, which is communication and learning, is to connect them. See, number five, connect them with better resources. Now, this might be resources inside them. Courage or creativity or discipline that they didn't realize that they had and that all you have to do is buy. Oh, by the way, Paul Carpentier said, breathe. Best advice ever. Breathing is breaking the pattern. It's step three, breaking the pattern. You're using your physical body to break the stress pattern so that you're out of the stress tunnel. So now you can see the options that are available to you. So, so number five, connect them with better resources. Those might be things that they did in the past. Remember, you had discipline then. How did you do that? It might be connect them with their courage. Remember when you stood up to that bully? How did you do that? We can forget how strong we are. We can forget how smart we are. This is a time that it's useful to get very quiet and look into yourself or to be around someone who's going to encourage you to be the best. You can be the coach, the teacher, the guru, the shaman, the therapist, whatever. Or maybe just a family member, somebody say, you're better than this, and you think, oh, you're right. I have been better at controlling myself in the past. That's one thing. Within the circle of who we are, we forget how strong we are. We forget the reason resources we have. So you can help connect them, to help them understand who they are and that they're better than they thought they were. But there are also resources outside themselves. So I can't start a business because it takes money to make money. Well, you might need to partner with someone who has money so you Learn how to present your idea in such a way. Remember, you're using the persuasion framework. You want to understand their world. They want to invest their money in something that makes them money. You achieve rapport with them, right, by making them think, oh, you're like me. And so if you're like them, then if they trust themselves, then they'll trust you too. You interrupt the pattern. They are thinking, well, I'm not interested in investing anything right now. You make them laugh, tell them a joke, get their attention like this. And suddenly, well, okay, they tried to kick you out the door, but you were persistent and you made them laugh. Everybody wants to be happy, so you've already given them something that they wanted anyway. And so you then have to show them how your business could work. This is how we can make money together. If we do this, this is the audience, this is the market. We can reach them, we can satisfy a legitimate need. And you and I will rake in the money. Resources can be outside. It could be partnerships with other people. The hero's journey talks about the fact that on the way to any worthwhile goal, you're going to fail and you're going to hit the dark night of the soul. The moment in which it feels that you simply don't have what it takes to make it. And the majority of popular films and books will have a moment at which the person cannot reach the goal that they. They're trying to reach. And it feels like all is lost. And then they either somebody says, I remember just watching a Gina Davis movie, the Long Kiss Goodnight. And at the very end she's like, I'm dying. I'm hurt. I can't move. And her daughter says, get up, Mommy. Life is pain, princess. Echoing a line that she said to the little girl earlier in the movie. And she gets. She finds a strength inside herself and gets up. It was a matter of trusting something outside yourself, trusting your own capacity. She trusted her daughter that she was telling the truth about her having more strength inside her than she realized. Or it could be the trusting of a divine force, the belief that the universe makes sense and that once again, any belief, any goal that you could hold continuously in your heart over time is one that you can satisfy. They have to believe. How do you find out about what the resources are that are necessary to reach a goal? Easy. You study people who've already reached the goal, preferably people who are as close to where you are as possible. And you say, oh, they went to this school, they got these grades, they took this test, they Got their license to practice medicine. What am I going to need to do that? I'm going to need the money to go to school. I'm going to need to organize my time better. I'm going to need study partners. I'm going to do this, this, this, this, and this. You break down what those resources are. You subtract. You get a realistic assessment of the resources you have. You subtract the resources you have from the resources that you're going to need. And what's left is what you need to acquire change, how much you need to grow, grow in order to accomplish the thing that you want. You divide that up into pieces. How do you eat an elephant? One forkful at a time, you divide up those pieces and you set out eating the elephant. What do I need to do in order to be this thing? Be a black belt? You walk into school the first day, you see black belts doing things that look like magic. It's like, oh, my God, what do I need to do? I need a uniform. I need enough money to pay for lessons. I need a certain amount of tolerance for fear and pain, a certain amount of discipline. I need to go to school every day or three times a week, whatever, and I will begin to learn, you know, what the first few steps are. And you have faith that after you finish those steps, you'll get more information to know what your next steps are. Same thing is true in having healthy relationships. Same thing is true in a writing career. Same thing is true in the martial arts. So I suggest to you that this is just truth. You know, that this is one of the ways that I develop faith in things, is does it work in all three of these arenas in which I think it would be reasonable, say I have a certain level of mastery in those three things. And, you know, you might disagree, in which case what I'm saying will not connect with you. I think that mastery is just, you know, having the basics of your craft and unconscious competence and committing to your pass for a lifetime. That when you do that, you are on the path of mastery. And mastery is then a verb, not a noun. But that's another discussion. So we've gone through the first five steps. The sixth step is future pacing. They have to be able to see themselves performing the successful behaviors. Okay, so if. If your kid says, you know, when the teacher looks at me that way, I think he thinks I'm an idiot and I get mad. When I get mad, I start acting up in class because I don't care what he thinks about me, because he thinks I'm an idiot. So that's why I got sent to the principal's office. So if you work with them on their emotions, one thing that might be very useful is to actually role play the classroom. Get them to show you what is the expression that the teacher gave them and that you have them imagine that they're in the context in which they need to exhibit the new behavior. And then you call them an idiot and you give them that look and you do everything you can to trigger that response so that they will then. And remember, as soon as you feel this, what are the things you want them to notice if they. You're going to try to get them to kill the monster while it's small. They hunch their face looks a particular way, they're going to have a particular feeling inside themselves. You bring that stuff up to consciousness every time you start feeling that way, every time your vision changes in this way, when your breathing shifts up into your chest, drop your breathing, drop your breathing. Change your breathing. Think to yourself, I love myself. Imagine yourself. Imagine the teacher standing naked, which is a great way to not be intimidated by somebody. Whatever the behaviors are, you're trying to get them to adapt in the new situation, get them to imagine themselves having done it and doing it successfully. It's great role playing. It really does work. It is the dark side of this, or the pale side of this is that you can actually get them to imagine the results of having done things right, but you can also get them to imagine the results of having done things wrong. That if you, if somebody has a bad habit and you try to get them to change the bad habit, smoking, overeating, you know, spending their money too freely. If you can get them to imagine the end result of that. Quite often people don't really think through their behaviors. It's not that they're stupid. It's that everyone has a limited amount of energy and if they think that this is not an important thing, they won't think it through. You know, it's like, that's just, you know, let me just focus on what I'm doing right here. If you can get them, you know, if you keep eating this way, if you keep smoking those cigarettes, if you keep treating your kids this way, you know, cats in the Cradle, Harry Chapin, if you keep behaving this way, if you keep. If you don't do something to deal with your writer's block, you're never going to have the career, you're never going to have the relationship. Your kids are Going to drop out of school, you're going to get fat, you're going to die of cancer, okay? You have to get them to associate the current behavior, behavior with the negative outcome if they don't change and the positive outcome if they do. To the degree that you can make this real, they will automatically change their behavior. We are absolutely motor set to do things that increase our pleasure and decrease our pain. Then the seventh is to connect the last one, to connect the behavior with their higher principles. Sahasrara 7 Chakra is outside the body. Okay? It's spirituality, but higher principles. The easiest way to describe that is, what would you die for? Because if you know what you would die for, you know what you'll live for. So if you say, well, I die for my kids, I die for my community, I die for my values, I die for my country, I would die for my religious beliefs, my belief in God or Jesus or whatever, whatever it is that the person believes in that's more important than their ego. If you can connect the thing that you want them to do to that higher thing, do it for your kids, do it for your kids. It is easier for them to motivate themselves. Now, those are the seven basic steps. You can connect this with anything. But what I can promise you is that if you look at the times that you've been able to help people change, you've been able to convince them you used some of this stuff. You may not have realized you were doing it, but actually go through this. You understood them. You understood what motivated them. You understood how to get leverage on them so that they wanted to do it. You established rapport with them so that they trusted you. You broke their patterns in some way, you know, because, you know, quite frankly, one way that we broke Jason's pattern in terms of his behavior is that we put his Internet on a separate circuit. So if he doesn't do things right, he wakes up in the morning and he doesn't have Internet. That breaks the pattern. Now, what we want to do is to teach him to do these things automatically. We know that he has the ability, the intelligence that he needs to do all these things to solve all these problems for himself without us being in the mix. But in order to get that engine started, sometimes necessary to push the car. You convince them that the behaviors will lead to pleasure rather than pain. You connect them to the resources that they need to accomplish it, and you get them to visualize the successful outcome of practicing the thing that you want them to do. Going back to the title Here I can't get these idiots to change their minds automatically. You had no rapport with them and you did not have enough respect for them to understand why they did what they did, why they think what they think. And the first place. That means you have almost no chance of changing them. So there's the framework for that. So you guys have been listening, you've been a good audience. We have some more time here, and I can either go over how these things apply in some specific instance, or we can talk about other things for the next 15 minutes. So Jamie Rodriguez said it's much easier to apply this influence distort, influencing someone else. If I've done my own work in these things. Absolutely. You got it. You got it. That is absolutely the way to do it. You first make these changes within yourself. If I have done my own work in these things, I could not do that without help. But I learned as much trying to teach someone else. I learned being a student. I would say that it is easier to do it with help, but we do end up making a lot of changes by ourselves. But sometimes we have. We can't do it quickly. We have to wait for life to give us enough pain that our old way of doing things no longer works and we're pushed out of those initial patterns. In that sense, you can either wait for life to give you enough pain and sometimes that's. I'm sorry, but you've got terminal lung cancer. Now it's too late to quit. So what you want to do is to have the pain. Daddy, I'm afraid you're going to die. I want you to dance at my wedding. Please don't smoke. And all of a sudden you're seeing the pain of someone you love being hurt by your behavior. And now you find the strength to change. The more you understand this within yourself and you go through these steps, the easier it is to have unconscious competence to the point where you can help other people. So I would suggest choosing a goal in one in each of the three major arenas. Relationships with other people with yourself. Having a healthy relationship with other people is just a matter of having a healthy relationship with yourself. It ain't that hard. The way I said is, we are all descended from thousands of generations of people who found partners. It is every chipmunk in the woods, you know, it finds a partner. It's not that hard if you are a healthy human being. The problem is sometimes we are not willing to do the work to be healthy. And so we create codependent, sick relationships with other People. Even worse is when it is predators who know that they can manipulate us and go after us. So people don't want to heal, but they want other people to ignore the fact that they've got wounds. No. You can either create a relationship with someone who has equal and opposite wounds, or you heal those things enough and you can have a relationship with someone who's pretty healthy. Everybody's got some wounds, but you earn your way into the company of people who are healthy. It does happen. If you heal yourself enough. So you could use relationships. You could take a look at your body. Maybe you need to lose some weight, stop smoking. You want to take up a spirit. What stops you from doing that? Take a look at those things. Apply these principles there. How about your career? Making money? The biggest complaint that people have in the arts is that they're not making any money. In every case that I've seen, they suck at marketing, they suck at sales. They don't understand it at all. They think they do. They read an article once. But it's a little bit like people I know who have, you know, you go in their house and they have a thousand books on, you know, on lots of different subjects. But you ask them, you know, are you interested in marketing? How many books do you have on marketing? None. You're sitting in weight loss. How many books do you have on. On exercise and controlling eating? None. I have books on one or the other, but never both at the same time. In terms of relationships, how many people do you talk to? What books do you have by people who've actually had successful relationships talking about and have studied successful relationships and have helped other people find successful relationships. In other words, what makes you think that you really understand how to do this? It's critical to take control of these things in your own life and to choose goals that are small enough that you can get feedback from the reactions that you get relatively quickly. That allows you to learn, allows you to calibrate. I'm learning all the time about my body, which has really changed at this phase in my life, my relationships. My son is always changing. Tananarive has her own needs. She's a dynamic, living human being. I have to continually remind myself that I have to pay attention to who she is today and not just think she's who she was 20 years ago, or especially not think that she's somebody else altogether. Am I reacting to her because of other associations I've had? Am I not paying attention to who she is today? What's going on here? You learn as you go, and if you will apply these things to your yourself, you then will have the understanding of a framework that you can use to change other people. Roberta Harrison Johnson says righteous commentary. Thank you very much, Roberta. So you guys have any questions about the application? Thank you. I've been with my wife for 34 years and I can't claim it's successful. Well, if you're not happy in your marriage, then you have a goal. It is. How can I be more joyful in my marriage? And I would say that it's important to the Chinese expression happy wife, happy life. You find a way to help make her happy because human beings tend towards reciprocity. If she's the kind of person who is just a taker in whatever you do, it just doesn't fill up that void inside her, then you might try, if you decide to stay within that marriage, you might try the persuasion framework to get her to change her behavior about whatever it is stopping her from experiencing joy. If you guys are happy in your relationship, then yeah, I'd say that's successful. I mean, seriously, I mean, if you define mastery as something that human beings could not plausibly do, I think that you have an unusual definition. If you have to be perfect at something to be a master of it as opposed to being really, really good at it and far better than you were before, I suggest you have an unusual definition. So I would say that if you've been married long enough to have raised children successfully, that's a successful marriage. Especially if the two of you are happy. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm not tap dancing every day at all moments with Tananarive. But what I do know is she's the best I'm ever going to find. I do know that she's the best I can do. I do know that she is magnificent. She's wonderful. She's an alive, beautiful, passionate, creative, honest, living human being who made the decision to share her life with me. I will always see that young girl, that younger girl that she was when we met, when we fell in love. No matter how her body changes, she's that same person. I don't expect her to be something she cannot be. But I have my own fears, my own ego crap that can stop me from seeing that she's just doing the best she can, I'm doing the best I can, and that we're better together than we are separately. That doesn't mean perfect. If I'm looking for perfection, I better treat it as a verb, not A noun because it exists in terms of a process, a vector, but not as a thing. Not as a thing. This stuff all relates to being what I call an awake, aware adult human being. To be able to be happy, successful, healthy, to feel like you live in your skin, you. You belong where you are in the world. Not totally, not without any failures, but to wake up in the morning feeling like I can't wait to get into this day, to go to bed at night feeling like I accomplished a lot today, or I had a lot of fun or I really caught up on my rest, let's hit it again tomorrow. That's what we're talking about and that's what that means. You have to deal with your fears, your insecurities, your angers. You have to use those emotions as they were intended to be used to motivate actions that then get results that then change your circumstances in a progressively climbing integrated feedback loop so that every day you are taking another step towards being the person that you want to be. This is certainly what the Warrior's Journey course about. Everything that I do here is taking some tiny little piece out of that course. I'm going to write that in there because I really love it. Www.realwarriorsjourney.com the people who've been going through this course think the world of it. They feel it is transformative. And some of them have made scholarships of available. So if you go to that, if you go to that course and you think that it's exactly what you need, but money stands in your way, don't let it reach out to me with a personal message. Explain your circumstances to me and you will go on the list for a free copy. I mean that very sincerely. I'm not kidding. I'm not bluffing at all. I love teaching, I love helping people. I've been blessed in terms of how many of the things that I asked for in life God gave me. I only wanted three things. I wanted a writing career, I wanted to be a martial arts expert and I wanted a family to love. And I got all of it. I see that the people who cause problems in the world are people who do not have that, that kind of balance. So everything I'm doing to teach people to have balance and to master their lives is saying, let's make a world of healthy citizens where we can all help each other. So please take it seriously. If this is what you need and you can't afford it, we'll make it possible for you. If you can't afford it and you'd like to try it? Please do. And you know, absolute, you know, money back guarantee. If you're not thrilled with it, it's a 10 day course. I believe that we captured lightning in a bottle in that sense. So are there any other questions, comments or requests? Otherwise, I'm going to get into my day. I'm going to watch some samurai movies, I'm going to hang out with my family. I'm going to plan my week. I've got a bunch of writing to do. We're in the middle of a script. We've been waking, waiting for months to get the, the, the paperwork done and all the, all the people involved in this, the producers and so forth and so on, all involved in creating the treatment where everybody can agree on the story structure. And now it's just a matter of execution. I love that. So I've done 15 pages so far last week. My plan is to do 20 pages a week, working Monday through Thursday, five pages a day. That's turning out rough draft and then it's a matter of polishing, lots of polishing. But the secret weapon of course is that Tananarive is also working on it. So If I do 20 pages and she does 15 pages, that's 35 pages a week. That's a rough draft of a movie in three weeks. You can get a lot of work done when you kind of get out of your way and just kind of let it happen and move yourself forward. Forward and enjoy the process. That's what that's all about, getting as much possible. Oh, Becky says thanks, Steve. Love you. I love you too, Becky. I always have. And I love your family and you know, I'm so proud of Josh. I'm so proud of what you've created there and I hope to see you soon. Jamie Rodriguez says thank you for well spent hour with Like Minds. I heard what I needed. Fantastic. That's why I do this. And this is. Please tell your friends. Please share this video with people. If you think that this video is giving you something of value, share it. That's the best thing you can do. I make my living doing other things. This is my time for sharing with you. D' Inorgia Taylor Price. I probably misspelled, mispronounce that name. I'm sorry. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You made my writing day. I have a plan. Fantastic. Let me know how it goes. Join the life writing group and share what's going on and let me know what I can cover in the following weeks. I'll be trying to meet with you every Sunday at noon Pacific to have conversations with you about this question. How do we be a alert, aware adult human beings? Thank you. Oh, great. I said it just right. Thank you. That makes my heart happy. I think I have lunch waiting for me. I have. What is it? A tuna melt sandwich and a honey lemon slush. Cannot wait. So listen, guys, you take care. It has been wonderful speaking to you. And I'd like to close this time together, as I always do, with the Sanskrit expression that means that the divinity within me salutes and acknowledges the divinity within each and every one of you. Namaste.