Human Potential Blog

Here’s a rant …

By the way, I highly recommend the book I’m writing about: Influence - Science and Practice, by Dr Robert B Cialdini.

I bought it because it’s been highly recommend by literally dozens of people I respect, and after just the first chapter I’m already convinced to recommend it!  It’s about subtle tricks that make all the difference to persuade people to do things we want them to.

The great thing about it is that it’s balanced: it gives some really surprising facts about how we can be persuaded to do things (or not), which is great for anyone in sales, business development, training or negotiation.  But it doesn’t stop there.

It then tells us what we can do to protect ourselves against having those tricks used against us by malicious salespeople.  Now that’s not just a great way to level the playing field, but actually helps us make sure that we all get what we want in the first place.  Salespeople using the techniques get to sell more - but only to people who want what they’re selling - and customers get to buy more of what they need without being either hustled put off by the techniques the salesperson used.

I only recommend a few of the books I read, and this one is high on the list.

… OK back to the rant.

On page 91 (of the 4th Edition) Dr Cialdini gives a live example of how an effective salesperson ‘trapped’ him into buying something he didn’t want, using one of the techniques of influence.  After the example (Page 93) he offers a suggestion for how to counter the technique, which I feel can be greatly improved upon!

Here’s the thing, Dr Cialdini felt trapped by the salesperson for one reason only: he had been making exaggerated claims in his answers.  When the saleswoman then took his answers and told him he could save $1,200 with a subscription to their club, she was absolutely correct, and the only reason he felt trapped is that he would have had to admit that he’d been exaggerating.  This is the power of the technique by the way, nobody likes to go back and contradict themselves, and to be true to his word Dr Cialdini had to go ahead and make the purchase.

Now, his suggested solution would work: to sense that you don’t want to go ahead and back out nonetheless.  IF you have been exaggerating that is.  But it’s not really necessary …

Here’s a far more radical suggestion: How about just telling the truth?  Wow.  That’s challenging isn’t it! But the reality is that if he’d given straight answers to the saleswoman’s questions, her offer would actually have been appropriate to his situation.  He would probably have bought anyway, but possibly at a smaller cost and expecting a much smaller benefit, and he would have been happy with the outcome instead of writing a book about it!

Now for many people telling the truth to a salesperson may be less straightforward than it should be - and that’s normal.  “Social Desirablity”, or the tendency to adjust what we say in order to make a more favourable impression, is both very human and very common.

But speaking as a salesperson myself, it would be so much more straightforward if our prospects were straightforward with us.  If you say the truth, it’s impossible to catch you out, and the only way anyone can take advantage of you is by giving you something that’s even more valuable to you.

So I wish everyone would read the book and learn both how to have a greater influence as well as how to protect ourselves from pressure.

By the way, it’s not just about sales.  Chapter 3 covers the situation why it’s possible for people simply to walk on by when you’ve been attacked, had a serious accident, or are suffering a stroke - not because they don’t care but because they are automatically following the herd.  Buy it or borrow it, but you must read it.  Especially if you are a city-dweller it could quite literally save your life one day.

I love it when I find people who know nothing about our work writing about Paradox.  In this one Mark Joyner shares about psychologists’ advice that he’s discovered.

“Let your Evil Twin come out and play for your heart’s sake.”

In a situation he didn’t like, Mark was surprised at the advice he got both from a superintendent with life experience and from a book about anger management.  Students of Harrison Assessments will immediately recognise Paradox Theory in action.  The best quote is that anger “only gets a bad rap partly because it is often erroneously associated with violence.”

It’s a short post - here it is!

Enjoy

John

Here’s a good one by Mark Joyner.

Your friends are great, but are they all great?  Do you have any friends who, after all, you like them, but sometimes do things you wish they hadn’t?

How to recognise a “frenemy”, and what are the three steps you can take to protect yourself and your relationship.  Mark’s post is short and to the point, so go here to check it out!

John

I subscribe to quotes from Abraham-Hicks.com - and unlike many others I subscribe to, can recommend their material.   If you’ve watched one of the initial editions of The Secret, you’ll have seen Esther Hicks and will know that she originally articulated much of the law-of-attraction thinking the movie is based around.

Here’s a quote that I got from them today:-

“It is not your role to make others happy; it is your role to keep yourself in balance. When you pay  attention to how you feel and practice self-empowering thoughts that align with who you really are, you will offer an example of thriving that will be of tremendous value to those who have the  benefit of observing you.

“You cannot get poor enough to help poor people thrive or sick enough to help sick people get well. You only ever uplift from your position of strength and clarity and alignment.”

I particularly like that last bit - the bold emphasis is mine.

Stay in balance!!

I’ve not made a post in a while, but this one is worth sharing as it affects us all.  I just received the following question:-

“Do you have general wisdom on how to handle insecurities? I usually handle them with positive affirmations, but you are not so hot on those, so I was wondering. I’m fraught with them today.”

Here are my thoughts, which are part of an exchange of ideas I’ll be sharing here:-

Simple enough - insecurities are the mirror-image of confidence.

If you look at both sides of it you see that neither can exist without the other, and yes, that means that “confidence” cannot exist but for the presence of “insecurities”.  If there’s nothing to worry about, there’s equally nothing at all to be confident about.  From there you can see that insecurities are not just useful, but necessary.  You only have them now because there is something that you are actually confident about, now.  It may be something you’re not focusing on at this moment but sure as eggs is eggs it’s there somewhere.

In fact, insecurities are a big foundation for our experience of existence.  If you didn’t exist there would be nothing to be insecure about, right?  So as long as there is a “you” that is conscious of your existence, there are going to be things that “you” - or actually, just your mind - will worry about.

Which is all very well, but the question is not why they exist, but rather what’s an effective way to respond to them?

So here’s another take on it - have a look at the insecurities and see when they reside:  Past? Present? Future?

I’ll bet the majority (80%, 90%, possibly more) are connected either with things that happened in the past, or things that have not happened yet.  If so, this would be totally normal, as it’s much harder to be insecure about what’s happening right now than about imagined situations!

Sorry if that seems short and simple, hope you weren’t looking for a thesis.  The issue is actually a huge one - it’s just that the solution needs to be simple.  Simpler than thought.

The best place to start is right here and now.  What’s happening now?  Look around, and use all 5 of your senses.  In particular, look for anything that you might need to be insecure about.  To be sure, there might be something, like a bus heading straight at you or a nutcase with a weapon or something.  If there is you need to stop reading this and handle it right now ;-)  OK, you back now?  Here’s the thing: even in a real live threatening situation you will find that by focussing more and more on what’s happening right now, there is less and less to worry about.  It’s actually quite peaceful, right now.  Anytime.

From that position of peace, if you feel like it you can look at your insecurities and sort them out.  Memory?  Or worry?

If you find a feeling that’s associated with a memory, you can just let it be.  Whatever happened has already happened and is no longer happening now.  You may be remembering a hurt that was very real at the time, but since it’s only in your memory it’s nothing to worry about, nobody ever died of a memory.  BTW if you’re thinking about it happening again, that’s not a memory, it’s a worry!  Let the memories be.

Likewise, worries have a life of their own.  They exist in a space somewhere or other, but like clouds in the sky they can only actually impact us if something starts to happen here and now.  Until it does happen, we’re still free to do whatever we’re doing … here, and now.

Of course if focussing on the present or accepting your insecurities is a challenge any time, you can break it down further into smaller and smaller steps, but it’s still basically the same principle.  Regardless of whether it’s easy or challenging, it gets easier when you focus on breaking it down into what’s happening here and now and what’s not.

Practice makes perfect, and with practice it becomes automatic to face fears and difficulties by first focussing on what’s happening now and what you have now, and then working back out from there.

If you look behind the mental chatter about everything that might be going wrong, you can see an underlying belief that you deserve more … which comes from confidence in your own inner worth.  You see how one creates the other?

Much more useful is just to notice the pattern.  As soon as you’re conscious of a pattern that’s happening the pattern loses its grip on your actions.  In that moment you are free to make a new choice, or to continue the pattern, but do so consciously.

Notice that our underlying human nature doesn’t change - we still have the hormones, we still have mental chatter, we’re still reactive to fear / pain / guilt much more strongly than we are to joy / peace / confidence - all of that is still very real and very much going on.  But when we’re conscious of them doing the thing that they always do we have more chance of making a different choice.  When we do something differently the outcome is sometimes different.

Of course you CAN use affirmations - just notice that you don’t NEED to.  Affirmations are by definition out of balance.  They may themselves be part of a pattern of swings.  Nothing intrinsically wrong with that - you can ride the swings, and swings do tend to naturally follow each other.  If they’re working, use them, but watch and notice both sides of the equation.

By the way, if you’ve read this far and have any thoughts, please do post a comment!  Say whatever you are thinking of, the best thing to share is your own experience.

This one’s a good one - It’s one of the #1 keys to success - from Dan Kennedy.   I’ll let him speak for himself:-

At a speaking engagement in Seattle a couple of years ago for doctors, a guy came up afterwards and said he wanted to become a speaker.  And he said, “You know one of the things that mystifies me is that how do you know the first time you tell a joke to an audience the joke’s going to work?” I said, “You never tell it to an audience for the first time. You practice it on people that don’t count. And then it works a few time with those people, then when you get it right you practice it over and over again right.”

You practice it over and over again.  You tell yourself that joke over and over again until you are sick of it then you tell it to an audience.

He said, “I don’t really want to work that hard.”

Well it’s finally arrived, and it was definitely worth waiting for!

Over the past weekend, Dr Dan Harrison spent two days presenting the features and functions of the newest version of Harrison Assessments to a select group of about 40 Distributors and Consultants.  This is the first time that the full system has been seen live, anywhere in the World, and to our surprise it is already available for use by end-users as a Beta Release.

Of course, in time-honoured tradition, although it is formally a Beta version it is fully functional and has already been thoroughly tested.  Having used it myself in Alpha release during Q1, I’m very confident that it really can be used on live assignments.

Harrison Assessments version 8 eliminates 80% of the work required to receive candidates and produce a high-quality short-list.  It is basically a complete Online Assessment Centre that for the first time in assessment history can accurately evaluate candidates covering hard skills and experience factors (Eligibility) AND behavioural factors (Suitability).  Not only that, but it will do the job at an unprecedented low cost and high quality.  To do this Dan had to create an entire new assessment methodology for grading hard skills, complementing his world-class soft skills assessment HA6.  Putting the two together, you can now do a complete screening of candidates using a “job success formula” that covers all of the most important factors required by the job, and find the best of your candidate pool in seconds, live, just as soon as they apply to you.

Now, there’s a lot more functionality that will be coming down the line, but we’re not allowed to share that yet (sorry).  The core screening functionality demonstrated today creates a platform that will be able to integrate a lot of other talent management functions seamlessly together … which we are now looking forward to even more keenly.

At this moment we have a system that extends the “pre-screen” functionality of HA6 to make it both useable and cost-effective, and adds a totally new process for capturing and evaluating the skills and experience elements that are traditionally presented on a CV.  There’s a new pricing model specifically tailored to the challenges of screening applicants, that makes great sense not just for mass hiring but also for filtering small numbers applying to a specific job role.

We will be issuing more comprehensive specifications and descriptions of the features over the coming days and weeks - so please take a moment right now to sign up for our HA8 newsletter via our signup page.

John

Hi Guys,

While this is not yet 100% conclusive evidence, I think there’s enough concern that we should find ways to reduce our current level of dependence on cellphones:-

Check out Dr Mercola’s article about cellphone dangers

Even if it’s hyped, and part of it probably is, there’s been enough bad news about the impact of radiation on our bodies and on our brains it’s not worth taking the risk just for the sake of convenience.

Ideas that occur to me:-
1. when in the office or at home, develop the habit of forwarding your cellphone to the landline (and of course, the habit of unforwarding it as you walk out the door!)
2. use handsfree when we can without disturbing others
3. get a headset - no, not a bluetooth, and (apparently) not a wire earphone either - designed to avoid transmitting electromagnetic waves into your head
4. if you have an old cellphone, replace it as soon as possible with a new one designed to minimise emissions - these days there’s a big difference between the best and the worst

Do you have any suggestions of your own?

I’m putting this here on our blog, to invite you to make your comments so that everyone can benefit.

John

This one is an absolute GEM.

Imagine a brain scientist … who has a stroke … not only surviving it but coming back able to tell us exactly how it feels as different parts of the brain cut in and cut out, and the insights she learned  … here she is, Jill Bolte Taylor, one in a million.

http://www.holistichongkong.com/Articles/My-Stroke-of-Insight.html

Ever wondered how left and right brain truly function?  Ever wondered where the ideas of Nirvana, of ‘Me’, of Presence, all come from?

It’s 19 minutes long.  well worth taking the time!

John

hi - this is an important article from the BBC - suitably balanced and skeptical - about the proven benefits of meditation.  In this case Midfulness Based Cognitive Therapy is being taught to people - with and without depression - both to heal depression and to decrease the chance of it occurring in the first place. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7319043.stm

 it’s well written, short, and even more to the point than my own writing - check it out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7319043.stm