Free Will has a BACK DOOR - YouTube
Transcripts:
Who are you? Who are you? Without a job title, without the name. I'm talking about like the internal story of who you are. The part that kind of whispers to you in the dark. The one that decides what you deserve in life. It decides what's possible, what you are allowed to want. That is our identity. It's pretty much the control panel for all of the decisions that we make throughout our life.
So if we want to learn about persuasion, persuasion is not about convincing someone of something new. It's about giving them a new story. So it's a story that their brain is desperate to believe. But first, I want to tell you about the brain's permission system. Most of your brain is kind of like a little bouncer at a nightclub.
Nothing is going to get in there without permission. But that permission is not logical. The permission for our brain is emotional, tribal. It has full alignment with our identity. So when somebody hears a message that conflicts with who they believe they are, it physically hurts and we call that cognitive dissonance.
It is a stress alarm in the anterior singulate cortex. your brain is kind of scrambling to shut it down by either changing the behavior that's contradicting or rewiring the identity to match up with it. People almost never change behavior first. They recode the entire story to end the pain. They say something like, "Yeah, but everyone else does it.
It's not lying. It's just reframing." Or, "I had no choice." or I was just following orders or I was doing what everybody else was doing. And that's dissonance resolved. Identity stays intact. The dissonance gets resolved. So now imagine weaponizing that. What if you could create dissonance on command and then offer that person a way out that just happens to align with your objectives? This isn't persuasion.
It's identity hacking. That's really what we're dealing with here. So here's how this works. You start by triggering the three most fragile identities that people carry. I'm a good person. I am not easily fooled. And I know who I am. If you can create tension inside of any of those, just a little spark of tension. The brain starts scrambling to put the fire out.
And that's what's happening inside your head. But you've already built rapport with somebody. You've shown confidence with somebody. You've embodied this calm composure that we talk about so often. You become the exit, the permission structure. The second point here is your identity is elastic, but it's only elastic with safety.
Identity only shifts when it feels safe to do it. So the brain has this threat radar. It's called the amygdala and another part called the locus ceruius. If you try to persuade somebody while their threat center is activated, you're essentially just talking to a wall. But if you present as somebody who's calm, you're congruent, you're authoritative, you have composure, their amygdala stands down.
It says, "This is not a threat. I can completely relax here." Your voice becomes this voice of reason for someone. And that is why composure matters more than charisma. Charisma might grab attention, but composure is what grants permission. Composure is what says you can change and I'm still going to be here and I'm still going to accept you.
That is the true power of being very very good at persuasion. So the technique here is something called the identity trap. And let's say you you want somebody to take some kind of action. You want them to maybe buy something, uh maybe forgive somebody, maybe leave a bad situation, maybe leave a cult that they freaking joined. Here's the play.
So, the first would be to affirm their current identity to make sure they know their current identity is is on good ground and saying something like, "You're the kind of person who thinks for themselves. I know that you've you're always doing that." Next, we introduce dissonance. And then we say something like, "But I don't know what it really is, but you've been kind of living by somebody else's script.
" That's cognitive dissonance. Then we build some kind of emotional gravity in into this whole thing. And we say something like, "You feel it every time that you hesitate. That tension in your chest, that's not fear. It's your real self trying to break through." And we offer something like an exit. And the exit might be you already know what needs to happen.
The only thing left is permission and you have it now. And if you watch what happens, the shoulders drop, the eyes blink less, the breathing deepens, the brain is rewiring itself. And this is all happening in real time. The final most powerful weapon is most people think persuasion is about pushing somebody or like manipulating them kind of like pushing them into this new idea.
It's absolutely wrong. This is about letting somebody step into a new version of themselves because they feel safe doing it. True persuasion is permission. That's it. So, you're creating that safety with composure, with empathy, and with authority. And we're manufacturing that little tension there with some kind of dissonance, the bridge between who they are and who they want to be.
You're not forcing change. You're allowing change. And that's the difference between manipulation and mastery. The next time you want to change somebody's behavior, don't search for all these clever little tricks and words and tactics. Let me get a script. Don't try to outlogic them. It's never about logic.
So instead of doing all that, go primal. Go back to the ancestors. Speak to who they think they are. Create just enough dissonance to spark a little discomfort. Become the safe haven for resolving that cognitive dissonance and then give them permission. All of these skills compound over time. It's a lot like learning to play an instrument.
There's no 20inute video on the entire internet that will ever be created that's going to allow you to play guitar. That instrument that you decided to hear that you're here tonight to learn to play is the human brain. You are opening a door inside their brain they didn't know was there and then you're giving them the key so they can come back to it. This is true power.
This is how revolutions start. It's how love stories are written. And all that happens in the span of a single breath.