PERSUASION: MAKING IT REAL AND ETHICAL

This weekend (September 1-3) I delivered, for the very first time, the training from the Inside- Out Persuasion approach. This training has actually been many years in the making. While I finished the book earlier this year and it was published a few months ago, I actually began writing it in 2004. Then I stopped. I put the manuscript away. What stopped me was a the question. A question about the ethics of persuasion. “How can we teach and use persuasion processes and techniques in a human, humane, and ethical way?” And that question arises from a all-too-common fact of life: Anything powerful can be powerfully misused.

It was only when I studied and modeled authenticity that I was able to formulate persuasion in an essential ethical framework. That modeling led to the book and the training on that subject, Get Real: Becoming Your Real Self (2016). If you also are wondering, “Can I exercise intentional influence on others and do so in a way that’s respectful, truthful, honest, and honoring?” I discovered that the answer is “Yes!” If you are wondering, “Is it possible to become aware of people who are using influence techniques covertly and trying to get me to do something to my disadvantage?” and the answer to that is also “Yes!”

We can make persuasion real. How? By starting with yourself. First learn how to influence yourself. After all, if you cannot persuade yourself to do what you believe in, understand, value, and want— if you can’t influence yourself, whatever “influence” or “persuasion” that you attempt to apply to others is not going to be very effective or honest. So with regard to self- persuasion, how are you?

This highlights one of the ongoing themes in Neuro-Semantics — apply to self so that you can close the knowing–doing gap. That’s the gap between what you know and what you do. Understanding and knowing is about learning and discovering, doing is about implementation and execution. What could be the problem that you might have in actually performing what you know?

• Perhaps you have a lot of noise in your mind so that there’s a lot of chatter going on, lots of negative self-talk, lots of recordings of other people’s voices that you keep play over and over.

• Perhaps you have a fear-based mind and constantly run worrisome scenarios that make you anxious and fearful.

• Perhaps you have conflicting wants, hopes, fears, dreads, beliefs, etc. so that you feel torn apart and are incongruent when you try to go for one thing.

• Perhaps you are tortured by your past and can’t seem to get away from it, that it keeps coming up again and again.

Someone asked me in the training about what patterns he could use to deal with these things and enhance his self-persuasion. When I started thinking about that I heard myself say, “That’s what NLP Practitioner course is all about. It is about ‘running your own brain.’ It’s about taking charge of how you represent things, talk to yourself, manage your states, etc.” Then I said something I’ve never have said before or framed it is just this way before: “That one skill ought to be the single most important skill that we check for competency regarding a Practitioner Certificate— ‘Can this person run his own brain?’ ‘Does she control her self-talk so that it is nurturing and supportive?’ ‘Does he know how to treat himself kindly and gently when he’s made a mistake?’ The certificate should only go to those who have applied NLP to themselves and who can now ‘run their own brains.’”

This actually fits with a quote from the book, Using Your Brain for a Change (1985). Steve Andreas edited this book from some of Richard Bandler’s training.

"Most people don't actively and deliberately use their own brains. Your brain is like a machine without an ‘off’ switch. If you don't give it something to do, it just runs on and on until it gets bored. If you put someone in a sensory deprivation tank where there's no external experience, he'll start generating internal experience. If your brain is sitting around without anything to do, it's going to start doing something, and it doesn't seem to care what it is. You may care, but it doesn't... I want you to find out how you can learn to change your own experience, and get some control over what happens in your brain. Most people are prisoners of their own brains. It's as if they are chained to the last seat of the bus and someone else is driving. I want you to learn how to drive your own bus. If you don't give your brain a little direction, either it will just run randomly on its own, or other people will find ways to run it for you—and they may not always have your best interests in mind. Even if they do, they may get it wrong!" (pp. 7-8, italics added).

Self-Persuasion is the foundation for all good healthy and ethical persuasion. If you can’t persuade yourself to get yourself to do what you know you should be doing— you are not ready to try to influence someone else! First take care of home base. That’s what NLP Practitioner and what APG, the Introduction to Meta-States, is all about. So start there. When you achieve that then you will be ready for the other trainings we have in Neuro-Semantics on persuasion:

Self-persuasion enables you to make the influence you exert healthy because it is authentic. As you get real, as you first persuade yourself, then your persuasive message is congruent, comes from integrity, and invites others to also get real with you. There’s no covert messages, no deception, manipulation, or tricks. You are upfront, honest, and candid. Are you ready for some high level persuasion skills?