Create Powerful Messages With Natural Patterns
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What happens when you choose your words carefully? If you are like most people, the more attention you pay to your words, the less happy you are with the results. Chances are, you are most effective when you are paying the least attention to the words you use. On your best days, the right words come naturally and their impact is immediate and positive. How does that happen and how can you make it happen more often? The first thing to understand is that words are pack animals: they never occur in isolation. If you find yourself thinking about one word at a time, you are thinking in a way that contradicts your most effective thinking. The brain never does just one thing at a time; it pulls many things together into one pattern. When you are communicating effectively, you are using many different systems within your brain to influence many different systems in the brains of your listeners or readers. Understanding this allows you to manipulate patterns - not words - to get to the results you want. Begin by knowing what you impact you want. If the meaning of a message is the feedback it receives, then you can begin with the feedback and work back to the message. Influence never occurs in a vacuum: you want to have a particular influence on a particular person or group of people within a particular situation. Take a moment and allow that situation to come fully into your awareness. Know what you want to get what you want. Be aware that some ways of speaking and writing correspond to real life more effectively than others. Instead of choosing a lot of different words, choose a few elements to repeat in your communication: these elements could be words, images or concepts that you will use over and over again. Repetition is neither boring nor trivial: it is a basic strategy by which the brain makes messages available for recall (learning). When you use a word insistently, the message becomes the meaning of the word in combination with the meaning of the repetition. Now focus on the person or people you want to influence. Your most direct route to agreement with them is through the sensory experience you have in common. While your interpretations of abstract concepts might differ considerably, your experience of physical reality is more similar. Their brains (and yours) are already connecting abstract concepts with sensory experience. You can use those connections when you use words that deliberately connect concepts to words that connect with seeing, hearing and feeling. When you notice the sensory experience you associate with a concept, you have taken the first step to choosing words that elicit the same sensory experience - and move toward agreement on the concept. Finally, allow metaphor to give your words energy and direction. You might think that you have to search consciously for metaphors (maybe you are not sure what a metaphor is). You can relax. Metaphors are connections (implicit or explicit) between abstract concepts and things that are tangible to the senses. You remember that love is like a red, red rose. You also remember that the path to the top is bumpy, and that it's a long way from here to success. Metaphors like these seem to be hard-wired into human thinking. You are a natural maker of metaphors. As you loosen the inhibition imposed by the conscious mind, you will find that you can easily and naturally use metaphors to engage your audience in your message. Repetition, sensory references and metaphors are three patterns that are natural to human thought. You do not have to learn to use them. You just need to focus on the effect you want to have within a particular situation and allow yourself to use the language patterns that come readily to mind and connect the ideas important to you with the physical realities that create agreement and lead to change. Ideas tied to physical sensations or stimuli are easier to understand and to remember. They demonstrate that you are already at some level of agreement with your audience and establish a base for further agreement. Ultimately, they create movement through language that gets results. Stop blocking your best choice of words. Use the patterns that your brain already uses in learning and you will be well on the way to creating a powerful message that sticks. Linda Ferguson, Ph.D. is a senior partner at NLP Canada Training Inc. in Toronto, Canada. With her partner, Chris Keeler, Linda develops training that allows people to experience stronger integrity and better results. Clients experience rapid, sustainable change and long-term learning about how their thinking drives success. Drawing on fields from the arts to business to neuroscience, NLP Canada Training Inc. provides spring-training for the mind: clients sharpen their perceptions, focus their efforts, and become better at knowing what they want and communicating to get it. |
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