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Chapter 23 — Pre-Chapter Quiz:

Question 45: what is one way in this chapter that a person can manipulate you?

%.) by telling you who you are

p.) by telling you what to want

/.) by pretending they aren’t interested in “you”

f.) None of the above

 

Question 46: Why can manipulators/persuaders use relationships to target your who?

*.) your friends often match with your who

,.) Manipulators can study the who through them

!.) friends are often manipulative on their own

p.) something to do with dogs and kennels

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"Who is it that can tell me who I am?"

- William Shakespeare

There are many ways to use WHOs and Whats in conversation, even if WHOs can't be described in words. One way that I’d like to talk about is a form of manipulation you've probably faced many times in life, It’s the concept of someone else telling you WHO you are, based on your Whats. You see, the easiest way to get someone to agree with your opinion, is to get them to believe that your opinion aligns with their WHO. There are two clear-cut, easy ways to get this done. You can change how they view your opinion as a way to make it seem more aligned with What  they’ve done in the past, or an opinion they already have. Because most people use their Whats as a measurement of WHO they are, they believe that their Whats shouldn’t change easily (because WHO you are never changes). This means that they view their past decisions as rules/limitations for what they should be doing in the present. If you can get someone to believe that they’ve EVER had the type of WHO that aligns with your What (your opinion, your product, your service, or whatever), then they’ll devour it. This is how manipulators get you to stay in their circle of influence. If you can’t break free of What you are at any point in time, then they have you, hook, line, and sinker. 

Again, it’s not just that people dislike change, it’s mostly that they view it as difficult, because WHOs shouldn’t be able to do that. By mistaking Whats for WHOs, people limit themselves to making the same choices and mistakes repeatedly, because they’re scared to believe that they need to change in order to be worthy. The funny thing is, as you now know,

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they don’t! Changing your Whats does nothing to your WHO, but manipulators pretend that it does to make the negotiations more predictable, more controllable, and more… well, manipulate-able.

Focusing on WHOs like this is far from a moral approach. But it is how things work naturally within our brains. If you’ve ever sold anything, even if it was selling your idea WITHOUT an argument, then you’ve already been connecting WHOs and Whats anyways. You had to; because that’s the only way to get persuasion (and manipulation) done. Every decision made has an emotional component to know what’s a pro and what’s a con (Remember Chapter 4? On pages 87-89?). 

Every decision uses emotions, and therefore, connecting What path you want them to take (a logical tool) with WHO they are (an emotional one) is necessary. Thing is, this isn’t a form of manipulation when you remind someone of WHO they actually are after they’ve lost track of it, or when you give them a path that actually benefits them as much as you. In a world like ours, people lose track of their WHOs a lot, sadly, and if you remind them, it’s not an unnecessary change in behavior. You’ve simply allowed them to make the same choice they would have made anyway, if they had known themselves, and their own desires better. 

Remember, these labels (from the chapter titles) are more or less indicators of how close you are to knowing your true WHO. The more you think of yourself as being persuasive (this chapter) or successful, for example (cause it’s the title of another chapter) the closer you are to knowing your  WHO because these actions require using your WHOs in the correct way. The more often you label yourself like these chapters, the more often you are using WHOs correctly, whether by coincidence or not.

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?"

- William Shakespeare 

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Another one of the easiest ways to persuade is to change some of their big Whats, as discussed in Chapter 7: You Will Never Change. An easy What to start with is to convince them that people that they are similar to already like your product. If this person’s WHO is considered similar (or aligned) to your target, and it also matches with your product? Boom! Domino effect. There’s a WHO behind your friend, that's aligned with the WHO that's behind the product, and that’s aligned with the WHO that's behind you. Now all three are connected. It’s very easy to use that road to sell a product, through the friend’s approval, to someone that you’ve never even had contact with, or it can even be used as an additional bit of influence. While you’re talking with them you might throw in, “Oh! And your friend Becky? Yeah, she loves it too!”, almost as if you just thought of it, all spur of the moment like. It’ll still have an enormous effect either way, and though it isn’t easy to do so, it can be used to lead to viral effects. The main thing a viral effect depends on is how many similar people one person has around them. Each person is an intersection between all the other people that are similar to them. Everyone is just a gateway to everyone else.

This creates a sort of spider web, where every person is like a fork in the road along the silvery lines. If you pretend that the “spider web” was made out of guitar strings, then your goal is simply to pull, extremely hard, at the point that makes the most vibrations, in as many threads as possible, and for as long as can be. The longer it lasts, the longer the message is shared, and whatever it is that you choose gets to stay in the spotlight. The thing that makes this hard to do, is that the more wound-up threads there are around a single point, the harder it is to pull on a point that's filled with all of that wound-up tension. If you focus on only one point, (one really connected person) it can be a very hard way to start all of the vibrations needed, and to get that person to be truly invested in selling your product or idea. Yet, if there aren't many threads, then vibrating will only reach that small number of lines, and that means less people sharing the item that you want to go viral. The point, in trying to go viral, is to have a LARGE audience. So these strategies simply wouldn't work.

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What's fun about the method that I used was how easy it was to do for me. It was just based on a simple idea; to make a small radius around the central point, and to start the vibration through those multiple spots, as if pulling by multiple fingers at the same time. This created a larger blast of vibrations, and it still hit the central point that I wanted for my publicity. These vibrations, within this metaphor, are the equivalent of people talking about whatever thing it is that you used to vibrate the web. It's just not easy to pull hard at the center. No. It's usually best to pull at several spots along a small radius if you want a truly all-encompassing effect. You need a balance between many lines, but not too many, for each plucking point.

Remember, it’s not just people that have WHOs. Whats have WHOs, too. Relationships are Whats, and because of that, communities, are Whats. If you know the WHO behind a community, and can change people's views on it? Well, the possibilities for you, as a leader, are endless. 

Just, don't go throwing any "Modern Tea Parties" alright?

"Who is it that can tell me who I am?"

- William Shakespeare

 

 

Or should we say: 

 

"A WHO is it. 

That, can tell me WHO I am."

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Embrace the unexamined. Embrace yourself, and embrace your unseen potential, because if you don't act on those untold truths, then nobody will. 

And what good is it to live your life, if you haven't lived your fullest life?