Don’t make me go there! You’ve probably said that recently. I know that I have.
Well, put down your guard because I want to take you through an exercise. I want you to go with me for just a minute. Tie your left brain behind your back and come with me.
What if you were to not speak for a year? I mean nothing. Zip. You will still be your friendly self, but you just won’t speak. Of course, you’ll still find ways to communicate with family and friends, but not verbally. And none of your communication will explain why you are not speaking. Of course, this would be quite difficult but you’re a disciplined person and I’m sure you could do it.
If you are asking “Why would I do such a stupid thing?” then your left brain needs to be tightened down a bit.
Give it a minute. Your right brain will soon be supplying all of the reasons you need.
Why indeed? I could write a book about the experience! I’d become well-known! (He’s that guy that doesn’t talk) There’s a guy in the bible that didn’t talk for a year…maybe people would think I’m some sort of spiritual guru. My wife wouldn’t like it, but maybe in some weird way it would draw us closer. My kids would get a kick out of it.
OK, release your left brain. Yes, the consequences of such an act would very likely outweigh any personal benefit.
The point is this…before anyone will do anything at all, they must go there. They must do that thing in their imagination. Before they buy your jewelry, they must go there in their mind. Before they buy your cars, they must go there. Before they attend your college, you must show them the experience on the visuospatial sketchpad in their brain.
The trick is to supply them with just enough information for their right brain to start manufacturing the logic to feed back into the left hemisphere where the REAL decision can be made.
It’s not as easy as saying “Imagination yourself………..” If it were, I could really convince you about keeping quiet for a year. Going there is just a tactic. Figuring out where to go and how to get there is strategy.
Great blog, Dave!
Bucky Fuller actually went a year without talking for much the same reason you had in mind when writing your blog.
The venerable architect stood at the edge of Lake Michigan one night in his later 20s, intending to end it all. He was financially broke and grief-stricken over the loss of his five-year-old daughter to menengitis.
Suddenly something pulled him back from the inky waters. He began contemplating his life in the future rather than dwelling on the past. He resolved to “make a difference” with his life, as many of us like to say.
Bucky reasoned that to begin he had to purge his mind to the maximum extent of preconceptions, biases and unsupported beliefs. His first step was to escape the bondage of words, knowing that reducing everything to words (a left brain specialty) inhibited the workings of imagination (a right brain specialty). The rest is history.
You wrote, “The trick is to supply them with just enough information for their right brain to start manufacturing the logic to feed back into the left hemisphere where the REAL decision can be made.”
You are talking about what I call “conditional positioning” — saying enough of the right things to gain attention, but not so much as to preclude a person from imaginatively infering from a message on his terms how it relates to him. You might stroll over to my blog and see the piece I am posting tomorrow on conditional positioning which is the last in a series on how consumers’ worldviews are evolving away from objective (left brain) foundations towards subjective (right brain) foundations.
I hope most of the people (not everyone ever gets something right) who read this posting of yours can turn its insights into actionable concepts.
Thanks for posting such wisdom, Dave.
Thanks for the kind words. I really enjoyed the conditional positioning post as well.