Improve Your Persuasion Powers By Speaking Their Language

Wednesday

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to pay attention today to the words people use to describe their experience. Find out what "representational system" they use the most. Once you learn how to do this, you can start talking to people in a way that will reach them, because you'll be using the representational system they favor. But for now, your mission is to simply identify the primary representational system of everyone you talk to today.

Now that I've given you the mission, I'm going to explain it. A "representational system" is one of three things: Visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. When you think or remember, you are representing reality in your mind. For example, you can remember what happened yesterday by seeing mental pictures. That would be using your visual representational system. Or you could remember by recalling what someone told you yesterday or the sounds you heard yesterday. That would be using your auditory representational system. Or you could remember how you felt yesterday. That's using your kinesthetic representational system.

This all sounds terribly complicated, but it's not. We have three primary ways to store and recall reality: Visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Many of our memories or imaginings include all three representational systems, of course. In other words, you remember what you saw, what you heard, and what you felt.

But all of us tend to "favor" one representational system over the others, in the same way that you are right-handed or left-handed. You tend to use one representational system more than others. You tend to store your most important information in that representational system. You tend to respect and respond to information presented in that representational system more than you would if it was presented using a different representational system.

In other words, if you are a visually-oriented person, and I speak to you using visual terms, what I say will have more impact, will be more persuasive, will be more memorable to you than if I spoke to you using auditory terms.

Speaking in visual terms would be saying things like, "When you read the Quran, you will see things in a whole new light. You'll get the big picture." Speaking in auditory terms would be saying things like, "When you read the Quran, you are hearing the words of Mohammad the way Muslims around the world hear them. It may sound like what I'm saying does not make sense, but once you read the Quran, it will click for you." Speaking in kinesthetic terms would be saying things like, "When you read the Quran you'll grasp the overall negative, hostile feeling of Mohammad and Allah toward non-Muslims." Click here to find more examples of the kinds of words that indicate the three different representational systems.

But before attempting to speak someone's language, you must first know what it is. How can you know? By listening to the way people describe things when they talk. That's your assignment today. And ideally, you would keep it up every day until you can easily know what representational system people favor. Once you can do that, speaking someone's language is easy.

This exercise will increase your observational powers. And it will increase your ability to connect to people and influence them.

You can practice all day long. Anytime you are speaking with someone, pay attention to which words they use. Which sensory system are they talking about?

This is not as hard as you would think. If I told you to determine whether someone was right or left handed, you would be able to tell just by watching, don't you think? If you observed the person's behavior for awhile, you'd easily identify which hand they favor. You may have known the person for awhile and didn't know if they were right or left handed, but once you pay attention, once you're looking for it, you can find out just by paying attention.

You can do the same to discover the representational system they favor. It is only a matter of paying attention.

We need to reach people. We need to help them understand what we understand about the third jihad. We need to get past their barriers to listening. So we need to get really good at gaining rapport with people. One excellent way to improve our rapport and help people to listen to (and respect) what we say is to speak their language — to use the representational system they favor most when we speak.

Citizen Warrior is the author of the book, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam and also writes for Inquiry Into Islam, History is Fascinating, and Foundation for Coexistence. Subscribe to Citizen Warrior updates here. You can send an email to CW here.

8 comments:

Angela 3:54 PM  

I once saw on a youtube about the strategy of jihad. The video explained how at 2 percent Muslims in a country x occurs (cooperation with the host country) then at a higher percent comes dissent of various laws, then even higher percent comes violence, etc etc.

But I forgot what video that was. Do u know where I could get that information off hand?

Thanks!

Citizen Warrior 4:06 PM  

Yes, Angela. The video is called "What Islam Is Not." You can find it in many places online. Here it is on LiveLeak:

What Islam Is Not Video

And here is the text of the video:

Why Stop Muslim Immigration

Angela 9:16 PM  

THanks so much!

Last Crusade 9:46 AM  

You are quite amazing CW. The tools you are using including such simple mental skills to enhance communication and spread the message of the vile purpose behind Islam, is fantastic.
All your articles are excellent and you dont leave any stone unturned in the cause.
Islam has to be fought, and you are showing a whole new way to fight, through enhanced communication so that Muslims dont camouflage their evil ambitions of the Islamic caliphate behind the smokescreen of the religion of peace.
Islam has to eradicated for the world to be in peace, at least for some sense to prevail and not some ancient savagery under the guise of religion. Muhammed's naked ambition for world conquest is well exposed by you.
Hats off to your efforts and thanks for the tips.

Sivakumar India 12:10 AM  

Good work!

desdeash 8:26 AM  

I appreciate your singleness of purpose. You deal exclusively with the Islam problem.

Some other sympathetic sites have a broader range of issues. They bring up problems with blacks, hispanics, natives, liberals, LGBTs, Roma, democrats, etc. etc.

I even agree with most of thee concerns they raise. However, the most important issue facing me and my children is the Islamification of my world. I want the natives, the blacks, the liberals et al to become educated, to become aware of the imminent threat.

They will turn away from anything worthy stated on a site that offends them. Worse, they may become sympathetic to the Muslim agenda.

BlazingCatFur is my favorite site but it does not focus on this one issue and may be driving more away than it is attracting.

Anonymous 9:37 PM  

I agree with all comments. Communication coupled with knowledge is key.

Thanks for the good work.

Jennifer 7:49 PM  

I think a knowledge of the Myers Briggs can also be helpful in getting through to people. It is often relatively easy to get a sense of type by listening to people for a while and adjusting your communication to their wave length.

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