If you’ve ever tried to change someone’s mind and it bombed, then this post was made for you…

Your reasoning may have been perfect. Your language and logic clear. Your rhetoric compelling. But no matter what you said or tried, nothing seemed to penetrate the mind of the person you were speaking to.

It’s frustrating, right?

The challenge of changing people’s mind multiplies when the person you are speaking with, tenaciously holds onto the idea that their belief is right.

So, what should you do?

The solution is simple: If you can’t go forward, back up.

The first objective when changing beliefs is not about using fancier language patterns, it’s about discovering how the other person is framing things.

What we call the frame-of-reference is mission critical to effective belief change. The frame a person holds around about an idea, thought or belief immediately constraints and narrows what the person is attending to.

Have a look at this puzzle from yesterday’s email:

If you read that email then you know the instructions were:

(If you haven’t done this yet, thy this now.)

The instruction literally framed you into a point of view. Yet as you can see with your own eyes:

No matter how many times you think you’ve got the meaning nailed going “this step is the top step”, your brain shouts “hold up, there’s another step higher over there!” Round and round the puzzle you go…

The framing has you.

The same happens when masters of conversational change skilfully craft points of view in a person’s mind.

The best don’t use traditional sleight of mouth patterns. In fact, someone highly trained in this way of conversational belief change can convince others that a certain point of view is the ‘truth’.

Not because they (the speaker) says it is true, but because the listener’s own nervous system and reality strategy tells them it is true.

That’s why the skills I’m talking about and Michael Breen is about to show you, can and should be used very carefully. In the wrong hands, they can be used unethically. So don’t do that, OK?

Now before you watch today’s video, let’s quickly clear up some confusion…

Rethinking Sleight of Mouth:

In NLP, there is a lot of talk about de-framing, reframing, out-framing, sleight of mouth etc. but those activities occur later in the conversational change process.

The first move … the very first move is to figure out what the other person’s current frame of reference is.

• How are they constructing the belief they have?
• How are they reinforcing it?
• What are they referring to?

Learn those things and coming up with effective sleight of mouth patterns that quickly change their beliefs becomes much easier. It all starts with calibrating to the speaker’s frame of reference.

The frame of reference as Master Trainer Michael Breen shows in this video is your way in.

There’s much, much more to be said about framing. And we’ll get in to this some more soon. But one thing I want to shine a light on that Michael made reference to here and is mission critical if you want to change people’s beliefs at work is the frame of references aren’t isolated and static things.

Frame of references are dynamic. They operate within an individual and between two or more people. They shape their thinking and behaviour, frequently outside of their conscious awareness. Therefore learning to use framing well is incredibly powerful.

The more you learn how framing works and understand how the human brain puts conclusions together and becomes certain of things, the easier it is to change beliefs quickly.

With practice you’ll be able to do this entirely conversationally.

More about this in an upcoming email.

Stay tuned,

Tom

P.S. What’s the biggest challenge or frustration you have about changing people’s beliefs? Tell me here.