▫ The Magical Authority Voice.
When we were young, and our parents were angry with us they used the Authority Voice. They dropped their tone at the end of their sentences and we knew they were serious. After years of learning to adopt this serious state when we heard the Authority Voice, none of us can avoid feeling deferent and submissive when we hear it. This voice sounds firm, parental, and in our own best interest. You might understand the Authority Voice better by thinking about how it affects animals.
The Voice of Authority affects animals too. Although a dog does not understand human language, it does understand the Voice of Authority. It also knows when we are pleased with it and when we are angry with it.
You can learn to recognise the Authority Voice, by listening to how people speak. Do they have a childish whining voice - or, the Voice of Authority?
Of course, there are many magical ways for you to express yourself with your voice. The Authority Voice is one way of doing it when you want to command others.
For example, in normal speech, our voice naturally rises when we ask a question and it drops when we make a statement. You can practise using the questioning voice with statements when you want to make them more acceptable and the statement voice with questions, to make them more like statements of fact. Listen carefully to how others speak, in real life, in films and on the TV. You will notice many examples of using the voice in this way. Many effective communications depend on how something is said, although normally we are unaware of it.
You see, like animals, we respond more to intonation patterns than to meanings! We do this unconsciously. The Authority Voice, for example, is a pattern that automatically puts us in an obedient submissive state.
By listening to these patterns and using them consciously, you can greatly improve your communication skills. You can also avoid being influenced irrationally by others who use these patterns.
Newsreaders, for example, receive training on how to speak using the Authority Voice because they know that how they say something has greater impact than what they say. If something is said in one voice - the Voice of Authority - then we tend to believe it, but, when the very same thing is said in another voice, we tend to doubt it. It isn’t so much what we say, that acts for or against us, it is the screechy way we say it.
You need to practice using the authority voice, because, under stress, our voice tone normally rises and makes us sound childish and weak. If you practise, you can make your voice sound powerful, even when you are nervous. Men, in particular tend to deepen their voice when they are nervous. This is an attempt to use the Authority Voice, but they just sound nervous. Listen carefully to notice the difference. Practise carefully so it sounds right when you need it.
Mind Changing Techniques to Keep the Change By Ken Ward
When you use the Authority Voice you will automatically become more powerful and influential.
Practice by listening to others speaking and note how their voices changes, and what impression it creates. Listen especially to newsreaders! You will then be aware of the trick and you may use it yourself!
▫ Can I Really Be Lucky?
Yes, you can be lucky! Luck means occurring by chance, which implies that Luck just happens by chance, and it cannot be planned or obtained by intention.
You cannot influence the result of a lottery, or a roll of dice, for example. So you cannot win by wishing or hoping. Yet, apart from this you can be lucky.
Here's how!
Know what you want.
If you don't know what you want, how will you know when you find it?
As a young student, I was amazed that after learning a new word, I seemed to see it and hear it everywhere. It was as if the word had suddenly appeared everywhere. Of course, it hadn’t just appeared – it had always been there, but it was only after I had learned it that I noticed it.
In a similar way, when we become aware of opportunities, we notice them everywhere? Like my new word, when we feel lucky, we see opportunities everywhere. When we do not feel lucky, we miss them completely. Of course, the opportunities are always there, but we are not aware of them unless we feel lucky.
Opportunities of all kinds surround us, but we recognise them only when we feel lucky.Let everyone know what you want!
If you let others know what you want, they can pass on to you useful information and tips, but if they don’t know what you want, they obviously can't help you. So step 2 is to let everyone know what you want.Persist, but not for too long
If at first you don’t succeed, then try, try and try again, but if it still doesn’t work, then try something else!
How many times must you try until you find what will work? We don’t know. Eighty per cent of what we try fails to bring the dramatic results we want. Of the remaining 20 per cent, only 4 per cent will be of much use. People who are successful try many things. They have to, because they don’t know which thing will actually work. They also fail more often than they succeed. In fact, they fail many more times than they succeed. They try, try, and try again, and if it still doesn’t work, they do something else! Give up and try something else, when you have done your best. But give it your best first.Be a lifelong learner
I have often heard people talk about their dream, perhaps a new business. Yet many choose something they know nothing about. They do not prepare themselves by learning all they can, before they make the jump! Those who succeed become experts in their area of interest. They read, study, listen and ask questions, and gain experience.Trust your intuition!
Respect your hunches and 'feelings.' This does not mean you blindly gamble on a hunch. it means that you listen to your hunches, and consider them carefully, respect them but check them out! Remember many famous scientific discovers derived from sudden hunches or insights. But the scientist then had to prove them! Do not expect that all intuitions will come to you like a flash of lightning. Some of them might come to you gently and quietly. By listening to your intuitions and being aware of them you can open up the opportunities in your life.Believe you will succeed!
Many really great achievements did not come overnight. Often they were preceded by many false starts, and difficulties. You need to maintain your faith that you will soon succeed in small things and in time in great ones. Never give up on your dreams! You will succeed sooner than you think!
You can be lucky, not by magic or wild dreaming, but by following the tried and tested procedures above.
How To Talk So People Listen With Their Hearts
Some people are motivated to get pleasure, while others are motivated to avoid pain. We can call the first type “towards” people, and the second type, “away-from” people.
Motivating “towards” people
“Towards” people are motivated by moving towards pleasure. So, “towards” people find the following statement:
‘The house is a mess and I'd better clean it.' Less motivating than:
'The house is a mess, and, after I've cleaned it, I will be proud of it, so I'm going to feel really good'
You give towards people an appealing emotional reason or motive to clean the house. You explicitly state a motive that makes them feel emotionally good. If you are a “towards” person, then you should do the same in your self talk.
Use Good Feelings to Motivate “towards” people
To use this technique with “towards” people you need to find out what makes them feel good. This means you have to care about people and be interested in them. You need to be interested in them to use it properly. The method is to ask someone to do something and tell them that - after they do it - they will experience good emotional feelings!
🔺Here are some examples:
I’d better do some studying, or I’ll be in trouble. “x”
🔺If I do some studying, then I will learn something new and feel I have achieved something. "√"
🔺I’d better clean the car, otherwise I’ll feel guilty. “x”
🔺When I have cleaned the car, I shall feel proud of it. "√"
The first statement above would be motivating to an “away-from” person. It has an “x” because we are considering “towards” people.
▫Here are some more examples:
🔺I hate driving over to visit my old aunt, but I have to do it. “x”
When I have visited my aunt I shall feel good. "√"
🔺You never do things for me. “x”
🔺When you have put that shelf up, we can sit down and have a nice rest. It’ll be nice, won’t it? "√"
🔺I don’t fancy going shopping.
🔺We can get your favourite stuff, and when we get back, we can have a nice bottle of wine. "√"
▫ Here’s how you can do it:
Think of the benefits to yourself or to another of doing something.
Use benefits rather than obligation, or punishment to motivate you or the other person to do it.
▫Use Pain Avoidance to motivate “away-from”
people
“Away-from” people are motivated by avoiding pain. You can motivate them by telling them about the pain they will avoid by doing it.
🔺Wash the car and you’ll stop being ashamed of it.
🔺Visit Auntie and you wont’ feel guilty
🔺When I have cleaned the car, I shall feel proud of it. “x”
🔺I’d better clean the car, because if I don’t I shall feel guilty. "√"
Did you notice that this is the opposite of the example used for “towards” people? Does this remind you of the proverb, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison”? If so, you are well on the way to achieving your goals. Or should I have said, “You will avoid a lot of problems in life”? Do you see the difference between these two statements?
▫Pleasure AND Pain
You can also use both pleasure and pain:
🔺Wash the car and you won’t feel ashamed of it. You’ll be able to look at it and admire it.
🔺Visit Auntie and you won’t feel guilty. You’ll feel good because she loves to see you.
Most of us are probably motivated by moving towards pleasure. Some of us are motivated to avoid pain. Yet others are motivated by both moving towards pleasure and away-from pain. By framing motivating statements in terms of both, we increase our chances of motivating others.
Find out what motivates you and what motivates others, and frame your motivators accordingly.
▫The Relaxing Breath
Have you noticed that when you feel tense, you sometimes forget to breathe? You think you are having an anxiety attack when, in reality, you just haven't remembered to breathe! This might sound silly, but it is one of the most profound secrets of remaining calm. So when you feel anxious - remember to breathe! (We all feel anxious when we stop breathing!) So this is a quick and easy technique to handle stress:
Take a deep breath through the nostrils and be aware of your abdomen expanding. Breathe with your abdomen!
When you practise breathing in this way, put your hands on your abdomen and feel it expand as you breathe in. Do this to increase your awareness of how you breathe.
Breathe in deeply through the nostrils keeping your shoulders motionless and let the expanding abdomen let the air in.
When you have taken a deep breath, then let it out through the mouth noisily, perhaps doing a deep sigh! (Do it quietly, if you are with other people!)
Breathe in through the nostrils with the abdomen expanding and breathe out through the mouth noisily. Do this 5 times.
Notice how easy and quickly you can relax!
Practice doing the power breath so that you can do it easily and quickly when
you need to banish stress immediately.
There are four essential conditions that you must meet to be stress free, or to reduce stress. They are:Silence
Comfort
Air
Wanting to be calm.
Find a quiet place, preferably silent. Of course, too little stress can be just as bad as too much. Yet if you are stressed, you need less stimulation. That means silence…as silent as you can get.
Do you feel comfortable? Is your body in an awkward position? Change your position! Check if you have tensed some muscles for no reason? Relax them! Do you feel hot or cold? Hungry? Etc.? Many basic things, such as hunger, temperature, etc, determine whether you feel comfortable or not.
I remember one evening I started to tremble, and actually thought I was feeling anxious till I realised I was hungry. Of course, I was stressed, but the reason was lack of food, not lack of psychotherapy! We breathe to live! No wonder we feel stressed when we have too little air and when we breathe improperly. Check whether your breathing has stopped or is too shallow: Breathe deeply?
Finally, remember you get calm because you want to! Do you want to be calm? Motivate yourself to feel calm by reminding yourself of the great feeling you will get when you become calm.
Isn't it interesting that just pointing out a few obvious things can make all the difference!
▫When you find their magic words of influence
you become irresistible!
When we receive information we evaluate it, according to our criteria so we can determine whether it is bad or good, useless or useful, etc. You can use this fact to discover and use another’s criteria, to obtain their enthusiastic agreement. That person's criteria influence them magically and irresistibly. To determine another's criteria ask these question:
What makes this important to you?
What does this do for you?
What would I have to do to (get your business)?
What would have to happen for... (you to support me)?
Having determined the other's magic words, use these exact words exactly as they have used them to create a powerful influence. If they mispronounce or misuse words, then you should mispronounce and misuse them too - just as they did. When you do this, you can frame your message in a way that is magically irresistible to the listener!
Although each of us has our own magic words - which differ from others - there are certain magic words that appeal to most of us. The list given varies but tends to include:
🔺New
🔺Easy
🔺Free
🔺Love
🔺Health
🔺Money
🔺Sex
These words represent some of the criteria we all share. But our own personal criteria, which we reveal in response to the questions at the beginning of this article, influence us most of all. Discover and use these personal criteria and your communications will be magically irresistible!
Are you aware of how easy it is to change when you know how to?
▫ How To Deal With Criticism
People criticise us for three reasons:
We can do better in some area, for ourselves and for others.
The other person has done something wrong to us or to others unjustly.
We have done something, which is wrong for ourselves or for others, by harming them unjustly.
When the criticism is justified, and we could do better, then we should seek to do better.
When another criticises us, they have often done something wrong to us (usually without our knowledge). What they say surprises and confuses us because of the over- reaction or complete fabrication. We mentally search for what we might have done (although we did nothing). Because we turn inwards to search for an answer, we go into a trance. In this state, we recall some bad things we have done (although they might not be that bad!) and this makes us feel worse. The other has concealed their bad acts to us and hurt us more.
🔹We should always think:
🔺What have you done or said, which you wouldn't like me to find out about?
🔹We would say, however:
🔺You seem to be upset about something, let's sit down and talk it over. Now what specifically has been annoying you?
🔹After you listened to the complaints, ask:
🔺We have talked about what I have done wrong. Now I wonder if there is something you'd like to tell me?
Where we have done something wrong, which has brought upon us unfair criticism, then we should, where possible own up to what we have done wrong.
Of these three types of criticism, the one where we have done nothing wrong and the other has done something wrong against us is the most confusing one.
▫You Must Become a Cybernaut to Steer Yourself Through Life.
In ancient Greece, the Cybernaut was the person who steered the boat. He got the boat to its destination by keeping it on course. The boat didn't stay on course. It was continually off course. The wind blew it off course. And the waves pushed it off course. The Cybernaut had to continually change the course of the boat to keep it going where he wanted it to go. The boat reached its destination only because someone steered it.
A famous acrobat was asked how he kept his balance on a tightrope. He said, he never kept his balance. He was always losing it. When he veered to one side, he leaned to the other. It was a constant struggle to keep from falling off. A body walks a tightrope only because it is carefully controlled, because it is always falling one way or the other.
Back to the boat!
If you wanted to sail from Sparta to Athens, would you just get on the boat and let it go where it willed? Or would you continually steer it to keep it on course? Which method would lead you to Athens and which would lead you somewhere else, perhaps round in circles, or on the rocks? The answer is obvious, isn't it? Your boat will only reach its destination if someone steers it.
So much is really obvious. But do we apply this knowledge in our lives? Do we lead our lives in this way? Or do we hope that something will happen, or that someone will do what we want, (whether for their benefit or ours), so we can get what we want? Unless we do the steering then we will never attain our goals. In life we are constantly failing, and it is only by handling these failures that we keep on course and attain our goals. If we do not continually handle our failures, we will be like the Cybernaut who let his boat go where it floated.
What would we say to a Cybernaut who allowed this to happen? Would you say he or she was kind, tolerant and granted freedom of choice by letting the boat go where it wanted, when the boat crashed onto the rocks and sank with all aboard? What about the Cybernaut who steered the ship where he or she wanted to go, a cybernaut who did his own thing, and took us all to Troy when we wanted to go to Athens? This one is better than the previous one. At least we don't end up on the rocks! But the good Cybernaut is one who takes others where they want to go or takes them where they get what they want.
So in life you MUST be a Cybernaut. There is little choice. There are the rocks, there is going round in circles and there is the promised destination. To reach the promised destination, take the helm and steer your life in the direction you want for the benefit of us all.