Don’t you wish you had the ability to influence people and to get your point across even in the most challenging of conversations? If you do, keep reading because this article is about giving you the tools to be more influential.
There are three things you need to know to become a more influential person :
1.Our reality is made up.
100% of our experience is thought-generated. We tend to live in the illusion that our feelings and our experiences in life are created by the outside world: how much money we make, the friends we have, the way people interact with us. The reality is our circumstances have no influence on our thoughts and feelings.
Then why are we more tense when speaking to some people or more scared in certain situations? Because we believe that our circumstances influence our thoughts and feelings. Our problems don’t come from our circumstances, they come from the core belief that our circumstances matter.
Have you ever been stuck in a traffic jam? Have you ever found that you can be absolutely fuming about it one day and not bothered at all the next? Why is it that the exact same situation can result in 2 completely different behaviors? It’s because our feelings are 100% thought-generated.
And here is the thing about thoughts: they’re made up. Our mind creates them without our consent. We have absolutely no power over what goes through our heads.
2. We live in separate realities
A group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before, meet one for the first time. The first one put his hand on the elephant’s side “well” he said “he is exactly like a wall”. The second man felt only the tusk “my friend”, he said, “you are mistaken. He is not like a wall. He is round and smooth and sharp. He is like a spear”. The third man took hold of the elephant’s trunk “both of you are wrong”, he said “Anybody who knows anything can see that this elephant is like a snake”. The fourth reached out his arms and grasped one of the elephant’s legs “Oh how blind you are!” He said “it’s very plain to me that he is round and tall like a tree.” The fifth man took hold of the elephant’s ear “the blindest man ought to know that this beast is not like any of the things you name.” he said “he’s exactly like a huge fan” The sixth man seized the animal’s tail “oh foolish fellows!”, he cried, “ you surely have lost your senses. This elephant is exactly like a rope”. Then the elephant moved on, and the six blind men sat by the roadside all day and quarreled about him. Each believed that he knew just how the animal looked, and each called the others ignorant or insane for not agreeing with him.
We are all blinded by our own perception of reality because we all have access to a different part of the elephant.
We all live in a thought-created version of reality. Because our experience of reality is 100% thought generated, the way it looks to me will be different from the way it looks to you
That means that when somebody sees things differently from you it’s not because they’re idiots or they’re going out of their way to antagonise you. It’s because they “make up” a different reality to you.
Have you ever had an argument with someone and they say something like “when you calm down you’ll see that I am right”? Well, that’s simply not true. When you calm down you may appreciate their perspective more than you did, but your reality still won’t be the same as theirs.
3.Influencing starts with connection.
We live in separate realities, and no reality is more “right” than another. When you start understanding this, people who have different opinions to you stop being crazy or stupid and start being interesting.
In fact, there is no better way of being more influential than finding out why not every intelligent person on the planet agrees with you.
So here is that golden tip I promised you at the beginning of this article. Take the time to really listen and understand how someone can see what they see. Live through their reality for a minute, without judgment or agenda. When you don’t treat people like idiots, which means they won’t feel like you do, they might start listening to you and actually change their opinion.
Influencing starts with connection.
The understanding that our reality is different from others and that there is no inalienable truth can be freeing. Connecting with others on this deeper, more empathetic, human level opens us up to becoming smarter and more influential.
