This video is a really interesting talk at TED in 2008 by Martin Seligman, an American Psychologist. It provides an interesting insight into how Psychology has evolved over the last several decades and discusses the change on focus from finding problems with people, and their past, towards finding ways to make the lives of people happier.

This video demonstrates a woman’s eye accessing cues based on how she is asked to think. Using Sensory Acuity a lot of information can be learnt about what is going on inside somebodies heads. While eye accessing cues are not 100% reliable, they are often quite telling – as you will see in this video.

This video is taken from a NLP Seminar run in April, 2010. It is a quick two minute introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming and its history. Enjoy!

I don’t want you to read this article. I don’t want you to learn anything and, whatever you do, please DON’T press that button… the red one… don’t press it… okay? Oh… you’re reading this article? Darn – I thought I told you not to do that already?

Negative suggestion is a technique where a suggestion not to do something results in increasing the likelihood that the person will actually do it. You may have seen parents telling their children ‘Don’t run by the pool’ and then watched the children, appearing completely oblivious to their parents, start running by the pool. You’re probably wondering why people don’t do what they are told, maybe it is a curiosity or a resistance towards authority – or could it be something else?

Why do people not do what they are not told to not do?

Negative Suggestion doesn’t make much sense until you get into the mechanics of how the brain processes the words that you read/hear. It turns out that your mind processes sentences in a certain way. If I tell you, “Don’t think of a brown dog” you must think of a brown dog in order for your mind to process what it means to not think of a brown dog. If I tell you, “Don’t go near the road” you need to think of the road for the statement to be computed. The negative component of the sentence isn’t processed until later. And because you are picturing it in your mind your mind will try and move you towards it.

Are you unfamiliar with that concept of moving towards the things you picture in your mind? Try picturing a plate of your favourite food. Chocolate cake, fresh fruit, ice cream, hot chips – whatever. And really focus on that picture… focus harder… that’s right. Now, think about it, are you feeling hungrier for that food all of a sudden? If you are (and most people will be) that is the power a simple image can have in your mind!

You can generally spot a Negative Suggestion if the sentence contains words like:

not, don’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, won’t, can’t, haven’t… etc.

This raises serious questions about many messages in our community. The number of safety signs phrased negatively is astonishingly. My least favourite is the message they use for drink driving. The slogan they use in Western Australia is: Don’t drink and drive

But what do you think about? That’s right – drinking and driving! Honestly, stop a moment and think about the picture when you read:

Don’t drink and drive.

Now, clear the pictures from your mind, and think about the picture you have when you read:

Drive safe, drive sober.

Quite different pictures and when repeated (Suggestions are more effective when repeated) to the extent that the Don’t Drink and Drive message is we could possibly see quite different results in our community.

How do I make the most of it?

As with everything I’ll be sharing on this blog there are ways to use your new knowledge to your advantage. And with this particular tip there are two ways to really use it to your advantage, a good way and a not so good way (Haha did you see what I did there? ).

Negative Suggestion: The Good Way

Now that you know this is how the mind processes language you can use it to speak so that people create internal images that are congruent with what you want them to do. So “Don’t go on the road” becomes “Stay in the front yard”. Or “Don’t forget to buy some milk” could become “Remember to buy some milk”. By rephrasing what you say you will get much better results, especially in high pressure situations when people are reacting to your words without the chance to properly think them through.

Negative Suggestion: The Not So Good Way

This is slightly more advanced but can be a lot of fun. You can make use of negative suggestion to suggest things that the person may be resistant to otherwise. When combined with Milton Model style language it can make you very persuasive. A sales style example could be “I don’t want you to buy this product today unless you are completely happy it meets your needs” – at a conscious level the sentence makes sense BUT the negative suggestion means the person will be picturing buying the product today. Another example with a bit of Milton Model is “I don’t want know if you want to go out for lunch today but if you did want to go out for lunch today where could we go?”. Believe it or not the negative suggestion at the front of that question will make the person much more compliant as it won’t feel like you’re telling them what to do. The possibilities are endless!

See Negative Suggestion in Action:

There is a great video by Derren Brown on YouTube that shows it in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fIuMBDLOAQ

The video shows the Negative Suggestion in action with children following instructions and also with adults through the use of a written sign. Well worth the time to watch.

In Summary

The more awareness you have over your language, especially your use of negative suggestions, the more powerful you will become as a communicator. Over the next few days I encourage you to watch out for Negative Suggestions in your speech and the speech of others. As your awareness of it rises maybe you could even start using them yourself and enjoy the results…

It is, by any measure, a thoroughly rotten experiment. Here is this beautiful German shepherd, lying in one corner of a metal box, whimpering. He is receiving painful electric shocks, stimuli that should leave him howling in pain. Oddly enough, the dog could easily get out. The other side of the box is perfectly insulated from shocks, and only a low barrier separates the two sides. Though the dog could jump over to safety when the whim strikes him, the whim doesn’t strike him. Ever. He just lies down in the corner of the electric side, whimpering with each jarring jolt. He must be physically removed by the experimenter to be relived of the experience.

What happened to that dog?

A few days before entering the box, the animal was strapped to a restraining harness rigged with electric wires, inescapably receiving the same painful shock day and night. And at first he didn’t just stand there taking it, he reacted. He howled in pain. He urinated. He strained mightily against his harness in an increasingly desperate attempt to link some behaviour of his with the cessation of the pain. But it was no use. As the hours and even days ticked by, his resistance eventually subsided. Why? The dog began to receive a very clear message: There was no way out. Even after the dog had been released from the harness and placed into the metal box with escape route, he could no longer understand his options. Indeed, most learning had been shut down, and that’s probably the worst part of all.

Source: Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School, 2008, J. Medina

Learned Helplessness is a term coined by Martin Seligman to describe both the perception of inesapability and its associated cognitive collapse. Or, in simple terms, how when you perceive you can’t escape you lose the ability to behave as if you have options – or learnt helplessness. These experiments were started in the late 1960’s and the results are similar with most animals, including humans.

Earlier I came upon this excellent modern day experiment on YouTube. It was conducted live on a class room of students and the results are discussed with them. Quite remarkable and well worth the time to watch:

What areas of your life could you have learnt to be helpless? Is it possible that you have limiting beliefs that are holding you back from exercising options? Or have you made limiting decisions because you felt you couldn’t do anything else? Now that you’ve read this post it could be a good time to do a bit of navel gazing and consider areas of your life where you’ve been limiting you behaviour. When would now be a good time to start re-exploring your options?

In modeling Milton Erickson the creators of NLP observed that people make minute changes from moment to moment. Those changes have meaning if you have enough Sensory Acuity. So, what is sensory acuity? Sensory acuity is the ability to observe minute changes in a persons physiology from moment to moment. Based on the changes that you observe you can begin to gain an insight into what is going on for the other person.

In NLP they normally focus on these key parts of another persons physiology:

• Skin colour (Whether it is lighter or darker)
• Skin Tonus (Whether the tone of muscles is symmetrical or not symmetrical)
• Breathing Speed (Whether breathing is faster or slower)
• Breathing Location (Whether they’re breathing from higher or lower in their chest)
• Lower Lip Size (Whether it has more lines or less lines)
• Eye Focus (Whether their eyes are more focused or defocused)
• Pupil Dilation (Whether their pupils are more dilated or undilated)

The truth is that these are just a starting point – with enough sensory acuity you can easily gain insight into a persons state through any observable changes in their body. Milton Erickson famously noticed a member of one of his audiences going into trance. Later, he was asked how he knew she was going into trance. Milton replied, “I could tell because the pulse in her ankle slowed down”. The better you get at sensory acuity, the more powerful a communicator you will become! Sensory Acuity is especially vital in a good hypnotherapist as it is your only way of effectively gauging how quickly and deeply your client is in trance .

So, what is an example of this at work? Check out this YouTube video of the infamous Derren Brown at work with three car salesmen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi2cvop3vbM

This video is a great example of how Sensory Acuity can be subtly used to gain an insight into the internal representations of another person. Notice how with the third salesman Derren is able to determine when he is telling the truth without the salesman even opening his mouth. This is because of the subtle changes in his body language that Derren can easily pickup with his well practiced sensory acuity. Through the questions he asks he is able to calibrate, using sensory acuity, when they are telling the truth. Derren then simple picks the ‘odd one out’ (i.e. the answer where the persons physiology is noticeably different) and he can safely pick that as the lie.

It is important to note that sensory acuity must be calibrated on a person by person basis. The differences noticeable in one persons physiology who is telling the truth will not necessarily be the changes another persons physiology would show for the same internal representation.

The more you practice, the easier it gets. You can practice this on ANYONE you can see!

This post has a fascinating video with Jamie Smart from Salad Ltd. It demonstrates beautifully the power that small changes in language can have over your results. Check it out:

So, what did you think? Because you’ve watched the video you’re probably wanting to know more about NLP… right? Only kidding

How could you use this in your day-to-day life to get more powerful results?

Further Reading:
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

This is an excellent NLP Pattern for public speaking. I’ve been practicing it lately and getting good results even in one-on-one situations. Essentially the Charisma Pattern is a method used by many great public speakers (i.e. Martin Luther King) to build really fast and strong rapport.

You start by speaking slowly with kinisthetic words. Then you speed your speech up a bit and start using auditory words. Finally you move fully into visual with even faster speech and visual words.

This is an example script that makes use of the Charisma Pattern for a public speaker:

Weeeelcome (Said really slowly). It feels really good that you’ve all made it today. (Speeding up a bit) Speaking to a few of you on the phone in the lead up to this event I know how excited some of you are to be here today. (And going even faster) And now to see you all here, sitting where you’re sititng, I just know that things are going to go well today.

So given that my explanation and example probably still have you scratching your head I found this video that shows it in action that is well worth watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLdDcFmfBLU