Repackaging
by SteviePUA
I want to outline a concept which is a technique I have used for years with great result. Much of what I do is intuitive. I know I do it but it’s hard to pin down in concrete terms. I pinned something down recently after some reflection. In coming up with effective, congruent uncanned material (on-the-fly) people often struggle because what they want to say doesn’t fit the situation and the person the are interacting with. To make an effective impact you have to take the person’s state into account. Therefore, if you are set in advance on using a canned script and it doesn’t quite match the situation and/or the state of the person you are dealing with, guess what happens? You come across incongruent or what you are saying doesn’t ‘go in’ well because it doesn’t fit with the state the person is currently in.
There is a technique I want to talk about. I call it “REPACKAGING”.
People ask me how I am able to stay congruent and make what I am saying fit with the situation. The reason is my real, genuine emotions – things I have felt in the past (and are hence congruent) get repackaged into new stories to fit the current situation. The feelings are real, the content to carry the feelings is new.
The benefit of this is clear. What you are saying has genuine congruence because as you reaccess those feelings you have had in the past, you re-experience those feelings again. You take on some of that emotional state again. It’s like dipping your brush into a paintpot and it emerges with the new tinge of colour ready to be spread onto the canvas. You reaccess those feelings and then you create a story to fit the current situation you are in. The story is the vehicle for those emotions. In telling that story, you are aiming to change the state of the person you are with. By telling the story you are ‘painting’ their mind with some of the colour of the emotions on your brush. The content of the story is designed to fit with what you know is likely to be acceptable to the person. Your story can be made up to fit the needs of the person. Your emotions behind the story are real and because your emotions are real your story is congruent. For the duration of your story, if you do this right, you will, on one level BELIEVE your story really happened. That allows you to be totally congruent.
So, the steps here are
1. notice (calibrate) the state of the person
2. decide where you want to take the person in terms of state. Be realistic about what is likely to be acceptable to that person.
3. Think of a time when you felt that state you want the person to feel.
4. Reaccess some of the feelings you had in that state
5. As you continue to feel those emotions, create a story to fit the current situation. The story is a vehicle to show the emotions you want the person to feel.
6. You pull the person into your world as you engage them and they get involved in the emotions behind the story which has been designed to interest them.
7. By repackaging your genuine emotions into a new, purpose-designed story, your content is congruent and you lead the person into the new state. Make it something positive and something to take you forward in your relationship with them.
Remember, the emotional communication (subcommunication) is the more important thing here.
SteviePUA