Transcription
One of the things I was thinking about is, is there any way for my audience listening now, based on everything you know about psyops and the way that we're manipulated with media, is there any way that we might be able to help them be more objective in a world that is trying to force them into one frame or the other? Because I, you know, as a podcast, this may be a selfish thing. I speak to so many different people, and I'm going to speak to someone on the right, someone on the left, up, down, left, right. I don't really, as long as I think I'm going to be able to have a conversation with them, I'm going to meet them as I find them, and I'm going to have a conversation with them. And there's really no external pressure that's going to change that. Unfortunately, like I've, I've had all the external pressure in the world, and I'm not going to change that because I have to do this myself for a long period of time. So my, the thing that's going to keep me in love with this job is to be able to follow my curiosity and not be trapped by anyone else's pressure. But that requires your audience as well to be open-minded, which means that if I sit here with Kamala Harris or with Donald Trump, I, I want my audience to come into the conversation with as open-minded as they possibly are able to.
Let's talk about how to manipulate your next podcast guest into being more open-minded. Okay, and this technique is something we teach called negative dissociation. And the way that it works is, I'll make a small, it should sound like an observation about the world. So in our discussion, let's say we just sat down, and I'd say, you know what, I'm, I'm glad I'm interviewing with you. There's a lot of people out there that are just so closed off and locked in these little rigid beliefs. And I'm not sure whether it is they're just terrified of what, what people are going to think about them if they step outside the lines, or if they're scared of being open-minded for these other beliefs. I'm not sure which one it is. But I mean, you meet these people so often, and you're going to nod. You nodded your head while we were saying, 'cause what is, what I'm saying sounds true, and it probably is. But you're making that person very covertly agree that they are not that person. Does that make sense?
It makes perfect sense.
So throughout the conversation, what you're really doing is, you're not getting them to make an agreement about how they're going to act. You're getting them to make an agreement about who they are as a human being. So the moment you can get them to covertly make an "I am" statement in their head, you're hacking your way into that person's identity. So like, let's say you said that, they nodded, and then maybe a few minutes later, you're like, I got, I got a confession to make. I had, you know, I had social anxiety growing up. How did you get this open about everything? Have you always been this way, or was this through some kind of like leadership training or something like that that you went to? And the moment you answer that question, I've got you to commit. Now you're fully committed to being wide open for the rest of the conversation.
What would you assume they would then say in such a scenario?
They're like, I don't know. I, I think I've always been really open. I haven't been really scared about what people think about me, and I've always tried to wear my heart on my sleeve. So now you're getting to make all these commitments that they're going to be like, that going forward.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, you're not permanently changing a human being, but it's a temporary change that they will make for one little compartment of a, of an interaction with you. And is this because you're really, you're speaking to their, you said that identity, that sense of who they want to be, and that's heavily driven by social perception and what I think of them?
Yeah, but it's not who they want to be, it's who they say they are, and those are different. So if I wanted you to focus on me more, I'd do [clears throat] the opposite of the negative dissociation thing. And remember, I'm not talking about you. Because if I'm sitting here saying, "Oh, Stephen, you pay attention so well in a conversation," that sounds super weird and manipulative.
People say that to me all the time.
Yeah. Maybe they want, maybe they want you to. In reality, if I do the opposite of what that negative dissociation statement did, and I, I make a positive group of people and assign an attribute to them, so that's how you would do this. So it's like, you know, Stephen, it's amazing. Every time I meet these really high-performing CEOs, all of these Fortune 100 companies that I work with, you sit down with one of these CEOs, it's like they all have the exact same quality. You sit down with these people, and they stop what they're doing, and they just completely tune in to other people when they talk to them. So I'm taking a quality that I know you admire, like CEOs, all this kind of stuff, and I'm assigning a trait to that. And you're going to nod, and you're going to, that sounds kind of true, but it also means that you're agreeing that you are also that type of person. But I'm never saying it about you. So this is if I'm talking directly about you, which is what so many influence people teach out there. They're like, "Oh, I can tell that you this, or I can tell that you're the kind of person that blank and blank and blank." This is called aiming language. My, my language is aimed at you, and you can feel it. And people can feel that there's something going on if somebody's sitting there making guesses and weird assumptions about them. So anytime you're using any of these techniques, it should feel and sound like you're making an observation about the world.