How To Structure Reality
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” -Tom Waits
Reality consists as much with the structure that’s defined as it does with the assumptions we make about that structure. Wow! Just stop everything for a minute and read that again.
Reality consists as much with the structure that’s defined as it does with the assumptions we make about that structure.
The idea behind this one sentence, if you can comprehend it and put it to use, will skyrocket your ability to persuade as it begins to come out into your behaviors and language.
This is even more powerful when it comes to words, what they imply, what they presuppose. The following truism about persuasion is something that has formed the basis of my work, even before I was able to articulate it in exactly this way: people might believe what they are told, but they’ll always believe their own conclusions.
Consider it. This is important: People might believe what they’re told, but they will always believe their own conclusions.
You might be able to tell someone something and they believe you and maybe they will go along with what you are saying. However, if you help them to conclude on their own what you want them to conclude, that is going to be a solid belief. Part two of this truism is, they’ll form their conclusions as much from what you *don’t* state, as what you do state.
This is worth reading over and over and memorizing: People might believe what they are told, but they will always believe their own conclusions and they’ll form those conclusions as much from what you don’t state, as what you do.
The key then is to learn how to structure what you say such that what you don’t say communicates more powerfully than what you do say. This will make people come to the conclusion that you want them to have on their own.
The following is a linguistic category called Spoonerisms. This illustrates the idea that people might believe what they are told but they will always believe their own conclusions. Spoonerism are often thought to be a slip of the tongue but often they are a play on words. The example of ‘Go and shake a tower’ might be a funny and more subtle way of saying to someone that they smell bad. When you hear ‘go and shake a tower’ the brain automatically fills in the statement that was unsaid, ‘Go and take a shower.’
When ’shake a tower’ gets changed to ‘take a shower’ in your brain, it is all your brain’s own doing. I’ve nothing to do with that. It’s your brain’s way of making sense of what you are hearing.
However, you had to hear the opposite, you had to hear that, and you did it on your own. And that is what I’m saying when I state people might believe what you tell them but they’ll always believe their own conclusions and they will form those conclusions as much from what you don’t say as what you do.
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