The Structuring Of Reality
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” -Tom Waits
Reality consists as much with the structure that’s defined as it does with the assumptions we make about that structure. Wow! Just stop everything for a minute and read that again.
Reality is made up as much with the structure that’s defined as it does with the assumptions we make about that structure.
With this one sentence, if you can get it and use it, your ability to persuade will skyrocket forward as it begins to come out into your behaviors and language.
This is especially true when it comes to words and what they imply or presuppose. Something that has been the basis of my work for many years is this: people might believe what they are told, but they’ll always believe their own conclusions. This is a persuasion truism and something I knew even before I could articulate it.
Think about it. This is important: People might believe what they are told, but they will always believe their own conclusions.
It’s possible to persuade by telling someone something and having them believe you. The real power, however, is in having them conclude on their own what you want them to conclude. That is going to become a very solid belief for them. The second part of this truism is that they will form their conclusions as much from what you don’t say, as from what you do.
I want you to memorize this and live by it. People might believe what they are told, but they will always believe their own conclusions and they will form those conclusions as much from what you don’t say, as what you do.
The key then is to learn how to structure what you say such that what you don’t say communicates more powerfully than what you do say. This will make people come to the conclusion that you want them to have on their own.
The following is a linguistic category called Spoonerisms. This illustrates the idea that people might believe what they are told but they will always believe their own conclusions. Spoonerism are often thought to be a slip of the tongue but often they are a play on words. The example of ‘Go and shake a tower’ might be a funny and more subtle way of saying to someone that they smell bad. When you hear ‘go and shake a tower’ the brain automatically fills in the statement that was unsaid, ‘Go and take a shower.’
When ’shake a tower’ gets changed to ‘take a shower’ in your brain, it is all your brain’s own doing. I have nothing to do with that. It’s your brain’s way of making sense of what you’re hearing.
Your brain made you hear the words that made sense to it. You did that on your own. Again, people might believe what you tell them but they will always believe their own conclusions and they will form those conclusions as much from what you don’t say as what you do.