Monthly Archives: October 2009

The Fear of Rejection Explained

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In theory, communication is simple. You send a message and the recipient receives it and acts accordingly to the content of the message in practice, communication is a far cry from its theory. Each and every day you can’t help witnessing people who are either unable to express themselves in a clear way or deliberately avoid doing so, out of whatever reason. Communication, by its very meaning, has always had to do with passing a message to another entity but obscure communication takes the essence out of it: The information shared. Instead of making oneself understood amongst others, misunderstandings inevitably are aroused the root of most conflicts.

There is one major reason that dominates all others why people opt to deliberately blur information clarity:

Fear.

Probably the most common type of fear associated with unclear communication is the fear of rejection. The probability that your counterpart will disagree with or get hurt by the information you are about to transmit is often enough sufficient to drive people to withhold information.

The percentage of information transmitted is directly related to the level of self-acceptance and self-love. The more the person is in touch with itself, the less the damage an undesired answer can deal. A person with a high level of self-worth is hard to hurt  in any case, this person will have realized that any level of interpersonal incongruence has no impact on his or her worth and the level of validity of his or her perspective. A person with little self-worth that is out of touch with itself however is easy to hurt. Even small levels of incongruence in interpersonal communication will directly translate to a diminished experience of self-worth and a devastated validity of the person’s perspective.

Translated to real life experiences, the brink of a conflict sparked by incongruence in communication will be experienced much different. There are four major characteristics, when it comes to dealing with incongruence.

The Aware

A person that is very much in touch with itself will most probably reply: Okay. We’re out of congruence in this point. I have reasons to believe that my perspective holds true as much as you will have. Could you therefore help me understand why your perspective is correct? The dominating mind-set here is acceptance of the own perspective and understanding for the other’s perspective awareness that all perspectives are equivalent. This mind-set is growth-oriented and enables the person to experience new insights. The possibility that he or she might be wrong is none of a threat cooperation and learning better is the goal of communication.

The Egomaniac

A person, whose ego is really blown-up, will most probably reply: I don’t see why your point makes any sense. My perspective has to be closer to truth than yours, because so and so. Forcing the opponent into congruence is the dominating mind-set for the ego-driven person. In reality, this person also experiences fear  fear of not being right. In order to avoid being wrong, the person is very keen on its own perspective and would never allow the opponent’s perspective to hold true (which would mean defeat). This way, the person keeps itself from learning about new insights and while he or she may be able to convince his or her opponent by force, the discussion is ended with a mind-set of conflict and concurrence instead of a mind-set of cooperation. Ego-driven people often become hugely successful in life, from a perspective of monetary or other mundane riches, but often lack true friends and a loving relationship and hence are far from being happy or satisfied with what they have achieved.

The Preacher

A person with a lack of self-worth but a pile of knowledge will most probably reply: But see, my perspective has a point because so and so. Please understand.” The underlying phrase this person communicates is to beg for acceptance and praise. While generally open for other perspectives, this person experiences just too much fear to be able to give in – in the belief that they would lose themselves by doing so. Occasionally, such a person can be confused for an arrogant one because of the persistence of their arguments, even if proved wrong. The opponent to this person is like a life-threatening danger. This type of person is normally very well-educated and intelligent but has a hard time being respected and finding real friends. The pseudo-arrogant outside blocks the revelation of a lovable inside.

The Follower

A person with a lack of self-worth and mediocre knowledge will most probably reply: I see that I am wrong here. Sorry for being wrong. Thanks for clarification. He or she will never defend his or her perspective and willingly give in to whatever criticism comes along. Due to the lack of self-worth, this person will have no faith in the correctness of its own opinion the circumstance that others always know better is the dominating mind-set. Even if right, these people will have no faith in what they do or believe unless they are encouraged by others thereby making them dependent on their consent. This person is the archetype of the follower a person without own opinion that accepts whatever opinion the currently chosen leader has. For this kind of person it is normal to regularly change the leader in search for protection from the former leader as these individuals are easily abused when straying from their former leader’s opinion.

It only is the Aware that has the ability to communicate information just as it is: Acceptance of the own perspective and openness for the other persons. All the others have problems either to accept the other’s opinion, the own opinion or both and therefore are driven to conflict-laden communication and therefore problematic relationships.

Many people share the problems of the Egomaniac, the Preacher and the Follower in an age that is infested with so much information that conflict is almost pre-programmed, regardless of what we do or say. The probability that our own behavior is against someone else’s norm is steadily approaching one with a rising number of people around so conflict is practically inevitable it is a key ability to be able to deal with the fear of clear communication.

In order to become a human being that is able to safely navigate through these rough times, it is important to achieve a level of self-worth and self-acceptance that enables you to accept your opinion, even when faced with harsh opposition. Interestingly, your opposition can easily transform to an alliance from the moment you at least try to understand their perspective. Furthermore, people usually start to accept your perspective from the moment you wholeheartedly mean it people pick up on the slightest trace of self-doubt, so make sure that there is no more of it.

For all those who haven’t yet achieved this goal, the way towards it is the key. There are numerous ways to increase your level of self-acceptance. One of the easiest options to implement in daily life is choosing situations where you show self-acceptance in spite of the fact that they require a little bit more than you normally have. Thereby, you move out of your comfort zone into the so-called “learning zone“, where you experience discomfort without panicking. This way, you can gradually grow to become more self-confident situations that you have once mastered will be easy to handle in future.

A lot of small steps form a long way. If you are persistent, you will achieve what you want. If you are already there: Congratulations. You are amongst the souls that this planet is in high need of Be yourself and trust yourself.

About the Author: Simon Voggeneder studies the fields of mental power, healthy nutrition and natural training. Read his blog and improve your life now: ishina.info. Learn about training, nutrition, media, spirituality and self growth.

Use Conversational Hypnosis To Be More Persuasive

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Would you like to have the ability to conversationally get people to access resourceful, happy and motivated emotional states? How about having the ability to blow out limiting and unhelpful beliefs through a quick conversation over coffee? If it were possible how would you feel about being able to attach good feelings to you, your products or services whilst simultaneously attaching bad feelings to your competitors?

All of these things are possible with some basic conversational hypnosis techniques.

What is conversational hypnosis?

Before we can start developing the skills it might make sense to define what we mean by a hypnotic trance, how they occur and what we can do with them.

Since I use hypnosis as a persuasion tool I am going to suggest we use a flexible idea of what a trance is. Just for this article let us say that hypnosis is about altering a person’s state of consciousness. Let’s just look at a simple example. For a few moments think about a pleasant memory from your childhood.

Are you back yet? Good, you have just been in a mild hypnotic trance. You went from your reading trance into a pleasant memory trance and now back to a reading or even a thoughtful trance. And guess what, I induced that in you by asking you to do the exercise.

There is another important point in the exercise. I have no control, I can’t force you to do it and in fact you may not have done the exercise at all. As a conversational hypnotist, I don’t have the ability to make you do my trance I can only suggest and hope you come along.

The other point worth making is that obviously there are more subtle ways of inducing different trance states than just simply asking someone to do it. But often the simplest approach is the most powerful.

If trance is just about getting people to imagine things, how is that useful?

Here are a few ways that conversational hypnotists use their skills. As you are sat at your computer reading this list just think through how many of these might be useful for you:

  • Getting your dream date to imagine feeling real good waking up next to you tomorrow morning.
  • Getting a prospect to imagine how good they will feel after gaining the benefits of your product or service.
  • Taking someone that is feeling unmotivated or un-resourceful and getting them to remember what it feels like to rise over a challenge and succeed.
  • Taking someone who is being argumentative and closed minded and getting them to feel the benefits of thinking in a more flexible way.
  • Letting your team see the benefits they will get when they implement the changes you are asking them to make

I could go on but I suspect you have got the idea and you can imagine many different scenarios in your own life where you can already see the benefits of imagining things differently. If this is true then you already realize the benefits of learning how to use some of these powerful conversational hypnosis techniques.

So how can I take people into a hypnotic trance conversationally?

There are lots of complex techniques like anticipation frames that install states such as curiosity and embedded commands so you just have to find out about particular ideas, concepts and tools. But for the purpose of this article let’s just concentrate on a simple but powerful idea.

If I were to ask you a question that you fully considered then you will have changed the direction of your thoughts from where they were going to where I was directing you. How would you feel if you could use that one simple idea as a gateway to not only taking people into a trance but also in the direction you want them to go?

If this is useful to you here is the structure of that question:

What would it be like if you (x)

Where (x) is the thing you want them to do, feeling you want them to experience or idea you want them to access.

Here is an example:

What would it be like if you were easily talking people into a persuasive trance using this questioning technique?

I guess you might be thinking this takes some practice. You may be surprised to notice that it becomes very natural very quickly. What would it be like when you suddenly realize you are doing this naturally? Can you imagine yourself using this simple but powerful technique to be more persuasive? If you can then a quick way to practice might be to read this article again and just notice how many different ways I have used the same technique with you.

Rintu Basu is the owner of The NLP Company and author of the best selling Persuasion Skills Black Book. Based in Glasgow, Scotland he works as a Hypnotic Persuasion Skills Consultant helping individuals and organizations to reach their goals though being more persuasive.