Life Coaches Blog

Methods of Successful Influence

How did I shift the beliefs of a woman with a death wish into one so excited about living she took up salsa lessons? How did I persuade a man who had been carrying the burden of guilt for over 40 years that it was time to forgive himself? How did I use the power of words to propel my coaching success to become the fastest promoted senior coach in the history of one of the largest training companies in Singapore?

In the Secrets of Changing Minds series I reveal step by step the key communication tips & strategies from NLP and indirect hypnosis you can use to change minds and transform beliefs.

4 Questions You Need To Know

These are the 4 basic questions that NLP discovered the patterns of master communicators hinge upon. These are the 4 questions that I fall back to whenever I need to start, when all else fails, when the shit hits the fan and I have no idea what to say next to make the difference between persuasion success or failure.

It’s easy to talk about, but even better when you experience it for yourself; luckily you’re going to get a chance right here

First, pick any goal you’ve set for yourself.

Secondly, run through each of these questions one by one, and as you take the time to answer each one, notice how differently you feel with each question.

1) What would happen if you achieved this goal?

4) What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t achieve this goal?

Gone ‘what duh?‘ yet? I know I often do at question 4

How did you feel? There’s often a mind-expanding effect with this question…you begin to question things you didn’t before, and you get new answers, an important step towards changing minds.

How The 4 Saved A Life

My favorite example of how powerful these 4 basic questions can be comes from Richard Bandler in one of the earliest NLP books; Trance-Formations: Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the Structure of Hypnosis.

Richard meets an alcoholic old woman whom he gives a ride home to. On the way back, she complains and complains about all the ills and pains that being an alcoholic has given her…she admits to Richard that she’s at the end of her rope and has no idea what to do.

Richard, just before he lets her off, turns to her with all earnestness, and tells her that she’s been deceived, that all her life people have asked her the wrong question, that she’s been asking herself the wrong question. The question isn’t what would you do if you drank, he says, the question is what would you do if you didn’t.

He tells her to ponder the answer to that question and call her the next day.

When he gets her phone call, she tells him that it was the most unexpected question anyone had ever asked her. For the first time she had a massive change of focus, and started to imagine all the possibilities of her life if she got rid of her drinking problem. She thanked Richard, because on the day before, seeing no future but a past of alcoholism, she had intended to end her own life before meeting him.

What Richard had done was to help change her mind, by asking her a different question, he got her to focus on a different outcome, one she had never imagined before.

While the application is an art, the technique itself is pretty simple. These are the 4 basic questions to changing minds:

1) What would happen if you did?

4) What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t?