The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy

 

The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy

Little noticed and little scrutinized, commodity traders have become essential cogs in the modern economy. the commodity traders’ control over the flow of the world’s strategic resources has also made them powerful political actors. To grasp the interplay of money and power in the modern world, to see how oil and metals flow out of resource-rich countries and cash flows into the pockets of tycoons and kleptocrats, you need to understand the commodity traders. They usually say they are apolitical, motivated by profit rather than the pursuit of power. But there is little doubt that, as Vitol’s deals with Libya’s rebels show, they have shaped history. ​​They are the last swashbucklers of global capitalism: willing to do business where other companies don’t dare set foot, thriving through a mixture of ruthlessness and personal charm.

A large share of the world’s traded resources is handled by just a few companies, many of them owned by just a few people. The five largest oil trading houses handle 24 million barrels a day of crude and refined products, such as gasoline and jet fuel, equivalent to almost a quarter of the world’s petroleum demand. The seven leading agricultural traders handle just under half of the world’s grains and oilseeds. ​​Glencore, the largest metals trader, accounts for a third of the world’s supply of cobalt, a crucial raw material for electric vehicles. Today, Glencore is the largest metals trader, a top-three oil trader, and the world’s largest wheat trader. In agriculture, Cargill is king. The US company, the world’s largest trader of grains, carries itself with the quiet self-assurance of the generations of Midwest wealth on which it was built

For the most part, the commodity traders are privately owned companies, with less obligation to disclose information about their activities than their publicly listed counterparts. Many have traditionally viewed their superior access to information as a competitive edge – and so have gone to great lengths to avoid giving out any information about themselves. 

The focus of this book is the companies and individuals whose business is buying and selling physical commodities. It is they who control the flow of natural resources around the world; it is in their hands that an almost unique type of political and economic power is concentrated. 

It’s not just on gender diversity that the commodity traders fall down: their upper echelons are not only overwhelmingly male but also overwhelmingly white.

The basic business of the commodity traders is disarmingly simple: buy natural resources in one place and time, and sell them at another – hopefully making a profit in the process. Their role exists because the supply and demand of commodities often don’t match. The commodity traders are arbitragers par excellence, trying to exploit a series of differences in prices. By exploiting these price differences, they help to make markets more efficient, directing resources to their highest-value uses in response to price signals. They are, in the words of one academic, the visible manifestation of Adam Smith’s invisible hand

Commodity traders' tale offers an insight into how the modern world works – a world where the market is king, where international enterprises seem able to shrug off almost all attempts at regulation, and where titans of global finance hold more power than some elected politicians.

At the center of this book’s story are four developments that molded the global economy in the commodity traders’ favor. 

1. The first was the opening up of markets that had previously been tightly controlled – above all, oil. The dominance of the large oil companies, known as the ‘Seven Sisters’, was loosened by the wave of nationalizations that swept the countries of the Middle East in the 1970s.

2. The second was the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which, at a stroke, redrew a global network of economic relationships and political allegiances. 

3. The third was the spectacular economic growth of China in the first decade of this century. As the Chinese economy industrialized, it created enormous new demand for commodities. 

4. The fourth was the financialization of the global economy and the growth of the banking sector, beginning in the 1980s. suddenly the modern traders could use borrowed money and bank guarantees, enabling them to trade in much larger quantities and to marshal much larger sums of money.

One of the reasons the activities of the commodity traders have escaped oversight for so long is that they operate in the most opaque corners of the international financial system. The commodities they transport are often to be found on the high seas, beyond the scope of any national regulator; they typically trade through shell companies in offshore jurisdictions; and the traders have based themselves in places like Switzerland or Singapore, which are famed for their light-touch regulation. 

The three men (Theodor Weisser (of ​​Mabanaft[energey(oil)), Ludwig Jesselson (of Philipp Brothers[metal]), & ​​John H. MacMillan Jr (of Cargill[food])  were the founding fathers of the modern commodity trading industry.

For centuries, bands of merchant-adventurers had been traveling around the world seeking valuable resources to sell back at home – the most successful of them, the East India Company, governed the Indian subcontinent for several decades.

By the 1950s, the oil market was controlled by seven large companies. They came to be known as the ‘Seven Sisters’ – the forerunners of the companies that are today ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and BP. Many of them were the descendants of Standard Oil, created in the wake of its break-up

Oil also brought the traders closer to power. Governments had often looked at metals, minerals, and agricultural commodities as strategically sensitive resources. But oil was different: the money was bigger, and the governments of oil-producing countries were almost entirely dependent on petrodollars. The traders became friends with oil-rich leaders in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, while Western governments, desperate for cheap oil, turned to them to secure supplies. 

When the Seven Sisters had lost control of the oil price in 1973, the ability to determine prices had passed to OPEC. But that position continued to rely on the old, oligopolistic system of the Seven Sisters, where prices, once announced, would be respected. With the rise of the traders, the power to set prices now shifted firmly and irrevocably into the hands of the free market:

The market no longer belonged to the oligopolistic Seven Sisters, with their almost colonial oil deals in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. In their stead appeared traders like Marc Rich, hungry for risk and unburdened by history or, in some cases, ethics. Through their trading, they had facilitated one of the great geopolitical and economic revolutions of the modern era: the seizure of their natural resources by oil-rich nations, the rise of the petrodollar as a crucial element of international finance, and the rise of the petrostate as a force in global politics.

The collapse of the gold standard meant the value of the dollar, too, was the preserve of the market. Everywhere, the grip of Western governments and institutions on the world economy was loosening, and a new era of more ruthless capitalism was born.

The traders weren’t making money through a brilliant understanding of the market. They were simply willing to put aside any ethical principles to make more money. When challenged on their dealings with South Africa, the traders would reply that everything they were doing was legal. In the world of embargoes and political favors of the 1980s, the traders learned to be masters of disguise and deception. 

PAPER BARRELS

Anyone who buys a futures contract and holds it until its expiry date will receive a parcel of commodities; on the other hand, someone who sells a futures contract must, at expiry, deliver the commodities. Once the oil futures market came into being, traders could use futures contracts to buy or sell their oil many months in advance. But the usage of the new instruments was much broader than that. Most people didn’t hold them until expiry – instead, they bought and sold futures much as they would buy and sell the barrels of oil themselves. The futures allowed traders (and anyone else) to bet on the direction of the market without having to touch a physical barrel of oil. Hence the talk about ‘paper barrels’.

The collapse of the Soviet Union had redrawn the world map, replacing a crumbling empire with new nations and creating a new set of billionaire oligarchs whose money would flow around the world over the coming decades. The personalized nature of power in Russian politics and business-suited the commodity traders perfectly. ‘Everybody tried to choose a partner. Who’s going to work? Who will bring money? Who will give financial strength?’ explains Vishnevskiy, the former head of Glencore in Moscow. ‘The situation was win-win for all sides who survived hose willing to throw themselves and their money into the ‘wild east’ of the former Soviet Union were rewarded with enormous profits. And it was not just in the Russian metals industry that the traders thrived. The fall of the Soviet Union redrew the economic landscape for dozens of nations that had been operating under Moscow’s patronage, from Latin America to East Asia. Everywhere, there was a role for the commodity traders.

The number of commodities that a country consumes is, for the most part, a function of two factors: the number of people in the country, and their income. The relationship with commodity demand isn’t a straight line, however. 

As long as a country remains relatively poor, with annual per capita income below about $4,000, people spend most of their income on the basics they need to survive: food, clothes, and housing. What’s more, the governments of poor countries don’t have the money to make major investments in commodity-intensive public infrastructures, such as power plants and railways. Even if a very poor country grows rapidly, it doesn’t translate into much extra demand for commodities.

The same is true for a very rich country. Once a nation’s income rises above roughly $18,000–$20,000 per capita, households spend any extra income on services that require relatively small amounts of commodities: better education and health, recreation, and entertainment. Governments of such wealthy countries have usually already built the bulk of the public infrastructure they need.

China was the most important country to enter the commodity sweet spot, but not the only one. Across the world, many countries outside the industrialized nations of North America, Europe, and Japan were reaching a level of economic development that required far more natural resources than before. The synchronized, resource-intensive growth created what economists call a commodity ‘supercycle’: an extended period during which the price of raw materials is well above its long-run trend, lasting beyond a normal business cycle, and often extending for decades.

• The first modern commodity supercycle, for example, was triggered by the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century in Europe and America; 

• the second, by the global rearmament before the Second World War; 

• the third, by the economic boom of the Pax Americana and the reconstruction of Europe and Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

• The fourth began around the turn of the millennium, as China and other emerging economies entered the commodity sweet spot. It fundamentally altered the structure of the global commodity markets. Between 1998 and 2018, the seven largest emerging markets (the BRIC group of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, plus Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey) accounted for 92% of the increase in the world’s metals consumption, 67% of the increase in energy consumption, and 39% of the increase in food consumption

Speculation had always been a central element of commodity trading, although over the years many commodity traders have denied that their business involves placing bets on the future direction of prices. Of all the commodity trading houses, however, it is the agricultural traders whose business model has traditionally relied the most on speculation. That may be unsurprising: the agricultural traders had decades of trading in the Chicago futures markets, which had been founded in the nineteenth century before there was even such a thing as an oil futures market.

But it was also a function of the different structures of the agricultural commodity markets. In oil or metals, there are a few key suppliers – government agencies of oil-rich countries and large oil and mining companies. That means that, for oil and metals traders, winning large and favorable contracts with those organizations is one of the keys to success. But it also means that being a trader, in and of itself, doesn’t confer such a large informational advantage. Agricultural commodity traders, on the other hand, buy from thousands of individual farmers. That makes the traders’ jobs harder, but it also provides an opportunity: dealing with so many farmers gives the largest traders valuable information. Long before the concept of ‘big data’ became popular, the agricultural traders were putting it to work, aggregating information from thousands of farmers to get real-time insight into the state of the markets. 

Across the commodity trading industry, it was a time of spectacularly lucrative trades. In the decade to 2011, the world’s largest oil, metal, and agricultural trading houses – Vitol, Glencore, and Cargill, respectively – enjoyed a combined net income of $76.3 billion. That was an astonishing amount of money. It was ten times the profits the traders were generating in the 1990s. It was more than either Apple or Coca-Cola made over the same period. And it would have been enough money to buy entire titans of corporate America, such as Boeing or Goldman Sachs. And it had accrued to just a small handful of people. Cargill was still owned by the Cargill and MacMillan families, which between them now had fourteen billionaires – more than any other family in the world outside of royalty. Glencore, Vitol, and Trafigura were still owned by their staff, meaning the commodity trading bonanza made a few top executives fantastically rich.

The food crises of 2008 and 2010 were a demonstration of the influence of commodity traders. A policy pushed for by a trading house had helped cause chaos on world markets. That, in turn, helped make commodity traders more central than ever in feeding the world – which allowed them to make the biggest profits they’d ever seen. The whole affair marked the culmination of the commodity supercycle, a process that had elevated the traders to a position of great strategic significance, and had delivered them spectacular riches.

Information was becoming faster, cheaper, and more widely available, eroding the edge that had, in previous decades, allowed the traders to steal a march on the rest of the market. An increasingly transparent world made it even harder for less scrupulous commodity traders to make money through corruption or bribery. And the miners and oil majors who were their principal suppliers had gone through a phase of consolidation, leaving a few large players who had little need of the traders to help them handle logistics. The old-fashioned business model of the commodity trader, buying in one place and selling in another at a profit, was becoming all but impossible to sustain. Most of the commodity traders followed the path pioneered by Glencore and Cargill of investing in assets, using their profits to build their own supply chains, including mines, oil tankers, warehouses, flour mills, and more. 

As others followed his example on an ever-larger scale, the trading houses became not just middlemen, buying and selling oil, metals, and grains around the world, but little empires of infrastructure critical to the flow of global trade, much of it in emerging markets. 

Investing in assets may have made good business sense, but it was expensive, requiring long-term capital. Now, these companies were also looking for ways of raising longer-term financing. One option was to sell shares, and many raised money from public markets in the form of bonds. This new capital gave the commodity traders the firepower to do bigger deals and make big-ticket investments. But it also forced them to reveal much more information about themselves than they ever had before, bringing an unwelcome glare of publicity to an industry that had long operated in the shadows. 

All over the world, commodity traders’ cash was changing the course of history. And as they realized that the commodity traders had become enormously important actors in global finance and politics, Western politicians and regulators also began to realize that they had terrifyingly little oversight of what the commodity traders were doing. Even as the traders had accumulated unprecedented financial power, their activity remained almost entirely unregulated. But there was one aspect of their business where the commodity traders were potentially vulnerable to aggressive regulation. They were reliant on a relatively narrow group of banks to provide them with huge sums in credit. And, more than anything, they relied on being able to access those sums in US dollars.

For years, many commodity traders had looked at sanctions and embargoes as an opportunity rather than a threat. Countries under embargo had fewer choices about whom to trade with, and so the profits for those who found ways to do business with them were proportionately higher. That’s what had allowed Marc Rich and John Deuss to make astronomical profits from subverting the oil embargo against apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.

It was possible because the embargoes were poorly enforced. If they were put in place by only a few countries, then it was easy enough for the traders to open up a subsidiary in a country that hadn’t imposed sanctions, and deal through that subsidiary. Much of the traders’ activity took place in international waters, and so went ungoverned by any one nation’s laws. And the traders’ businesses similarly operated in the most opaque corners of the international financial system, where they might use a Cayman Islands shell company one day and a Maltese shell company the next; and where ships could sail under the flag of any number of nations, from Panama to Liberia or the Marshall Island.

This book has told the story of how the commodity traders rose, almost unnoticed, to the pinnacle of global power. With little fanfare, the commodity traders helped to free the global oil market from the grip of the Seven Sisters, re-carved the economic landscape of Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union, and empowered resource-rich governments from Congo to Iraq.

The traders have several far deeper and more structural problems. 

• The first is the democratization of information. As the speed and availability of information increased exponentially with the spread of the internet, the traders’ advantage was slowly whittled away. The democratization of information means that it has become more difficult to make money from simply moving commodities around the world.

• A second challenge to the traders’ profitability comes from the reversal of one of the trends that have benefited them most over the past three-quarters of a century: the liberalization of global trade. From the world’s first modern free trade treaty, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, to China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, the trend after the Second World War was for open borders, frictionless trade, and globalization. 

• A third challenge for the traders strikes at the core of their business: climate change. Much of the industry’s profits come from trading fossil fuels, such as oil, gas, and coal. If Big Oil and Big Coal are responsible for polluting the planet, the traders are their enablers, shipping their products to global markets. As the world increasingly turns against oil and coal consumption, the traders’ business will suffer. 

• Finally, the traders have become victims of their own success. The industry’s tentative move out of the shadows, epitomized by the Glencore IPO, has laid out the traders’ enormous profits for all to see. It has not just been US policymakers and law enforcement officials that have been dismayed by some of the details of the traders’ activity. It’s also the traders’ clients – the producers and consumers of natural resources – who have begun to wake up to the profits the traders have been making, in some cases at their expense.

Despite the pressure on their business, the traders remain profitable. The industry probably does face a reckoning at some point in the coming years, the oil market bonanza of 2020 notwithstanding. But as long as markets are less than perfectly efficient, there will still be money to be made – even without walking the knife-edge between legal and illegal – by exploiting inefficiencies and moving commodities around the world in response to price signals from the markets.

And the traders’ role as a clearinghouse for the world’s essential goods still endows them with an almost unique sort of economic and political power. It was as recently as 2017 that the traders’ money helped pay for Kurdistan’s independence push. It was the same year that Ivan Glasenberg was awarded a medal by Vladimir Putin for his services to the Russian state. And the oil companies and petrostates that emerge intact from the trials of 2020 will in no small part have the traders to thank for their survival.

The world is changing, but its natural resources still need to be bought and sold. And commodities are still a sure-fire path to money and power. The traders may well remain powerful actors in world affairs for years to come. But after decades in the shadows, their influence can surely no longer be ignored.

The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths by Anna Katharina Schaffner

 The Art of Self-Improvement: Ten Timeless Truths by Anna Katharina Schaffner 

Our appetite for self-improvement has never been greater: in 2020, the personal development market was valued at $39.99 billion worldwide and is forecast to grow rapidly over the next few decades.

At the most fundamental level, our desire to improve ourselves, and the belief that this is possible, is an act of rebellion against the idea of determinism. Engaging in the act of self-improvement is our—however flawed—effort to exert control over our lives. It is an attempt to defy whatever forces we may blame for our perceived insufficiencies: nature or nurture, genes or the environment, God, karma, fate, or the constellation of the planets. Our belief in the improbability of the self can therefore be seen as a powerful proclamation of defiance, an assertion of agency in a world where it is all too easy to feel powerless and adrift.

Know Thyself

The Greek philosopher Socrates (470–399 BCE) went even further, declaring that the unexamined life is not worth living. He proclaimed self-knowledge as an absolute good, indeed as our highest virtue. In Plato’s Five Dialogues, Socrates reflects: So I withdrew and thought to myself: ‘I am wiser than this man; it is likely that neither of us knows anything worthwhile, but he thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas when I do not know, neither do I think I know; so I am likely to be wiser than he to this small extent, that I do not think I know what I do not know.’ The jury, unconvinced by his defense, found him guilty, and Socrates was sentenced to death.

For there is no universal agreement on what a self really is. There are, for example, crucial differences between East Asian and Western notions of selfhood. The philosopher Julian Baggini argues that there are three main ways of conceptualizing the self:

• the no-self (as found in Buddhist traditions),
• the relational self (as found in Confucianism and certain Japanese traditions), and
• the atomized self (as found in most, but by no means all, Western accounts of selfhood)

Buddhists believe that we have no lasting, unchanging essence. Instead, we consist of five impermanent aggregates: our physical body, sensations and feelings, perceptions, mental activity, and consciousness. These aggregates bundle together in constantly changing constellations. What we think of as the self is therefore merely an assemblage of fleeting processes

Richard N. Bolles knew this well. His book What Color Is Your Parachute? (1970) has been described as the world’s most popular job-hunting guide. It is structured precisely around Ficino’s idea of engineering as good a match as possible between our natural bent and our profession. According to Bolles, it is necessary to take an inventory of the self, which enables us first to establish and then to plan our careers around our key passions and preferences.

The Stoic philosopher Seneca writes: Our relations with one another are like a stone arch, which would collapse if the stones did not mutually support each other, and which is upheld in this very way.

Jordan B. Peterson’s. In his bestselling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018), Peterson recommends that we copy the ways of the top-lobster. For it is winner-take-all in the lobster world, just as it is in human societies, where the top 1 percent have as much loot as the bottom 50 percent.

Abraham Maslow in Primitive physiological needs form the basis of his model, followed by safety, belongingness, and esteem, and at the very top, self-actualization. Other theories of our most fundamental needs prioritize attachment, terror management, and self-determination.

The psychologist Robert Kegan, for example, argues that there are only two great human yearnings—our striving for autonomy and independence and our need for inclusion and communion—and they are in conflict with one another. We could also add a need for beauty in its various forms.

Most, if not all, of our historically and culturally changing self-improvement aims, I believe, be traced back to these five basic needs

1. Social relations encompass our desire to feel connected, accepted, and part of a community. They also include our longing for understanding, friendship, and love.

2. Status includes our need for respect and attention, but also for power, influence, and control. Concerns about status may be manifest in a preoccupation with what others think about us and a desire to impress them—be that via looks, wit, ideas, clothes, cars, or other objects of conspicuous consumption. It may also be manifest in our need for professional recognition in the form of promotion, for social media likes and followers, or simply in feeling that our voices and opinions are heard and that we are taken seriously. At a deeper level, status relates to the hope that our existence matters and that it is positively acknowledged by others.

3. Learning is connected to our thirst for knowledge and understanding, as well, of course, to our desire to improve ourselves. Throughout our lives, most of us seek to continue to expand our understanding of the world. This includes the spiritual and the metaphysical, and questions pertaining to the meaning of our existence. Depending on which of these metaphors we adopt, as the American sociologist Micki McGee observes, we may imagine ourselves as combatants, contestants, or players; travelers or explorers; and entrepreneurs, salespersons, or managers. For the combatants, contestants, and players, winning is the goal, while power and wealth are typically the prizes. For the traveler or explorer, rewards tend to be experiential, nonmaterial, and spiritual. The entrepreneurial cluster, finally, is motivated by material gains.

4. Our desire for variety is what motivates us to travel to faraway places, to get to know new people, and to build new relationships. A form of epistemic and experiential curiosity, it leads us to try new foods and new sexual partners or to climb mountains. Our thirst for novelty sometimes makes us restless, driving us to search for new jobs and new challenges. If we do not seek variation, we end up dead in life, shutting out those new experiences that keep our minds and hearts active. Our horizons will shrink, our learning will stagnate, and we will become nothing but creatures of habit.

5. Our fifth and final basic desire, altruism, includes our wish to be good and to care for others.

Most of our aspirations—whether they be material, emotional, cognitive, or spiritual—can be located within these five categories. However, each period and culture tends to value some needs more than others. Maintaining a good balance between the five basic needs is an important task not only for individuals but for societies.

There is also a frequently neglected but essential social dimension to the hero’s quest. The hero’s true function is neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others. A hero, Campbell observes, is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. The true objective of the hero is to save others.

Why should we aspire to self-knowledge in the first place? Why is it a good thing to possess? Self-knowledge directly relates to one of our five basic needs, the desire to learn. It includes learning about our own patterns, preferences, and processes. The opposite of self-knowledge is ignorance—about who we really are, our true motives, and how others may perceive us. Freud would argue that self-knowledge emancipates us from being a slave to our unconscious and its many seemingly irrational whims. Only when we know our patterns, and whence they came, can we manage and perhaps even change them. Self-knowledge, then, yields mastery and realism, as well as congruence and alignment. It is the necessary first step in initiating change. Only by taking stock of what is—in as objective a way as possible—can we truly plan what we want to change. Self-knowledge, moreover, quite simply improves our chances of making wiser life choices on a regular basis.

genuine self-knowledge can never be gained purely by theoretical introspection or reading about different models of the mind, but only through trials and tribulations, and in dialogue with others. It needs to be acquired on our own journeys—heroic or otherwise.

Control Your Mind

A modern Christian version of Stoic principles can be found in Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer. The prayer has become a core mantra in twelve-step programs such as AA: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Writers such as Napoleon Hill, who wrote the bestselling Think and Grow Rich (1937), and more recently Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret (2006), argue that our thoughts are magnetic. If we think positive thoughts, we will automatically attract positive outcomes—and vice versa: if we are gloomy pessimists, bad things will happen to us. The illusion of omnipotence that Byrne and other mystic-esoteric self-help writers promote is dangerous in many ways. According to their logic, everything bad that happens to us is entirely our fault, and that includes illnesses, assault, poverty, and other misfortunes.

Napoleon Hill’s message is simple: we can all become rich if only we want to badly enough. If we focus strongly on thoughts about money and abundance, the universe will magically resonate with our subconscious and send infinite riches our way. Success comes to those who become SUCCESS CONSCIOUS, Hill claims. TRULY, THOUGHTS ARE THINGS—and powerful things at that when they are mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a BURNING DESIRE for their translation into riches or other material objects. All we need in order to become rich is to develop a definite desire. Then our thoughts, like magnets, attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts. If we magnetize our minds and become money conscious, we will be millionaires in no time

The most widely recommended self-help manual, by contrast, is David D. Burns’s Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. It is one of the very few self-help books that is proven to have measurable and lasting positive effects on its readers

Depression attacks our self-esteem and is often accompanied by strong feelings of shame, worthlessness, and despondency. For that reason, it is one of the most insidious forms of suffering.

Positive psychology, too, advocates a form of mind control, urging us to identify negative thoughts and counterproductive beliefs about ourselves. But the emphasis is more strongly on the positive and more productive beliefs with which we should replace them. In his book Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being—and How to Achieve Them (2011), Seligman argues that there are five basic elements that enable human flourishing: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment—the initials of which form the acronym PERMA.

If we succeed in adopting a more hopeful outlook on life, less hampered by negative self-talk and core beliefs, it is simply more likely that we will also be more successful in achieving our external aims

Let It Go

Surpassed in popularity only by the Bible, Lao-tzu’s Tao te ching is the second most widely translated text in the world. Poetic in style and richly ambiguous, it teems with insights that transcend time and place. Its central theme is spiritual self-cultivation by practicing the art of letting go. In stark contrast to Confucianism’s emphasis on conformity and respect for tradition and ritual, the Tao suggests that we can improve ourselves by returning to a simpler, more authentic, and intuitive way of life.

Lao-tzu writes; he who holds will lose it. Hence the sage, because he does nothing, never ruins anything; and because he does not hold, loses nothing. . . . Hence the sage desires not to desire.

As per Tao, self-improvement is not to be achieved via exertion or determination here, but instead by yielding and acceptance, and by giving up all resistance. It is unsurprising that suppleness is one of the most celebrated qualities in the Tao: A man is supple and weak when alive, but hard and stiff when dead, according to Lao-tzu. 

Daoist self-cultivation, then, differs radically from most other models in that it does not privilege reason, willpower, and effort as pathways to growth. It is one of the first major philosophies of life that celebrates intuition, simplicity, spontaneity, creativity, and authenticity

Letting go in its highest spiritual forms is very different from the Western versions of letting go. While Daoism and Buddhism promote the idea of letting go of our worldly attachments and desires, Western-style letting go tends to be presented as a strategy for reaching our long-term goals in more flexible and creative ways. Attaining those goals, rather than loosening our attachments to them, however, remains the ultimate aim.

Be Good

In order to be happy, Aristotle writes, we must seek to fulfill our potential and actualize our highest human capacity. In order to realize our potential, we have to work on our behavior and emotional responses to become the best possible versions of ourselves. Aristotle strongly believes that we can train ourselves to be good by strengthening our virtues and controlling our vices. Aristotle considers habituation, rather than teaching and intellectual understanding, to be the primary route to moral virtue. Happiness is inextricably linked to repeated virtuous action. The only way to be a good person, he believes, is to train ourselves to do good things, repeatedly and with good intentions. But we need to want to perform these good deeds, too. They must become a natural and automatic habit.

Following Socrates and Plato, Aristotle places the virtues at the center of a well-lived life. Like his teachers, he regards the core virtues (justice, courage, temperance, and practical wisdom) as complex rational, emotional, and social skills.

Aristotle differentiates between intellectual virtues on the one hand, and moral or character virtues on the other. The intellectual virtues include theoretical and practical wisdom, science, intuitive understanding, and craft expertise. Practicing the intellectual virtues can therefore be understood not just as doing good, but also as doing something excellently. Aristotle’s core character virtues include justice (treating others fairly), courage (not shying away from doing the right thing out of cowardice or laziness), and temperance, or self-control.

Even in esoteric self-help such as Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams (1994), we can find the recommendation to give first that which we seek: if you want joy, give joy to others; if you want love, learn to give love; if you want attention and appreciation, learn to give attention and appreciation; if you want material affluence, help others to become materially affluent. In fact, the easiest way to get what you want is to help others get what they want

Be Humble

Saint Augustine called humility the foundation of all other virtues.

Studying the complex social systems of wolf packs, Radinger writes, has taught her the most valuable lessons about morality, responsibility, and love. Her mantra is thus not What Would Jesus Do (WWJD), but What Would Wolves Do (WWWD) ​​Wolves are also masters of clear and effective communication, speaking with their entire bodies. Their excellent communication skills, Radinger suggests, are the reason why they rarely fight one another Clever planning also plays a key role, for they are highly adept at cornering and leading their prey into traps. Wolves are also extremely patient and persistent, but will sensibly count their losses and withdraw when the risks entailed by pursuing their original plans prove to be too high. Finally, hunting is always a team effort, with clearly assigned roles and a strict division of labor. The lessons Radinger invites us to draw from this are obvious.

While wolves remind us of our lost wild nature and model the advantages of strong social bonds, cats have long been envied by humans for very different reasons. The French writer Stéphane Garnier’s international bestseller How to Live Like Your Cat (2017) tries to explain our age-old fascination with felines and to translate the lessons into advice about how we should live. Although he fails to provide any scientific details on feline behavior, Garnier rightly points out that the lives of cats revolve around their own well-being, and that they spend a large proportion of their time seeking comfort and pleasure. Masters of self-care, love grooming their physical appearance, sleeping, stretching, sunbathing, and playing. At heart, they are hedonists who know how to demand and take their pleasures. They are also creatures of habit who dislike changes to their treasured routines. Fiercely independent, they are nevertheless loyal. Most importantly, they are self-contained, knowing their worth and preferences, gracing others with their attention only on their own terms. Garnier does not explore this further, but this non-neediness—a form of self-sufficient sovereignty—is also the core quality that attracts us to cat-like people.

Piercing our anthropocentric fantasies of supremacy could encourage us to treat not just other species but the very planet more respectfully. Human reason is not the only good worth celebrating. After all, many animals are better than we are at something: they may be faster or fiercer; they can hear, see, or smell better; they may be better at self-care, relaxing, and bonding; and many have more stable and supportive social structures than we do. While we may want to avoid becoming misanthropic preachers of self-loathing à la Kempis, we could certainly do with bringing our self-regard down a notch, or ten. For humility is also the only effective antidote to narcissism, and all its associated evils. It is, in essence, a readiness to admit our shortcomings coupled with a willingness to learn, be that from people, animals, plants, or even machines—whoever masters something we do not. The opportunities are infinite.

Simplify

Many philosophers and religious thinkers have preached the art of ascetic living, including the Stoics and various Buddhist, Jain, Hindu, Sufi, Christian, and Jewish sects. Whether mild or extreme, all of these forms of asceticism are based on the assumption of a strong link between simplicity and spirituality. Only by controlling our worldly desires can we purify our souls and fully focus on spiritual matters. For if we remain slaves to the demands of our flesh, we remain chained to the material world. 

Japan has firmly associated with all things minimalist in the popular imagination only about a tenth of its forbidding mountainous landscapes are arable; it is susceptible to earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. In the past, the Japanese often had to take flight at a moment’s notice on account of fires, fighting, bandits, and natural disasters, carrying all of their most precious possessions with them. They have thus learned to reduce those possessions to the bare essentials

French culture, by contrast, tends to be associated with a rigorous quality-oriented approach, in particular, with regard to clothes, food, and cosmetics French writer Dominique Loreau, who has lived in Japan for decades, brings these two cultural traditions into a productive dialogue. The result is distinctly Franco-Japanese lifestyle advice. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Loreau’s core mantras are less is more and quality tops quantity. Instead of buying twenty bargain-basements, soon-to-be-discarded outfits, she suggests that we invest in one good-quality cashmere garment. The same quality-driven approach applies to all other spheres of our lives as well: to our beauty care, our mental space, friendships, and furniture. It also holds for food: we should aim to eat little and only highly nutritious and healthy foods.

Use Your Imagination

Using our imagination in the form of creative visualizations is also a crucial self-improvement technique in its own right

The famous TED talker Brené Brown considers stories to be data with a soul. Like many other successful TED talkers, Brown knows that stories can reach not just our minds, but also our hearts, and as such are a highly effective means for building a connection with others. Moreover, they switch on specific areas in our brains. Merely factual information tends to activate our language-processing centers. Stories, by contrast, stimulate much larger areas in our brains, including not just the language center but also those parts that are responsible for visual and motor processing, as well as our sensory cortex. Stories can activate our mirror neurons, allowing us to imagine ourselves in a particular situation, doing something specific. They can also trigger hormonal responses in our brains: our adrenalin and cortisol production might be stimulated by narratives that evoke fear, for example, whereas stories appealing to our compassion and empathy can result in higher emissions of dopamine and oxytocin. All of this matters. Via this kind of imaginary experiential immersion, stories can prompt strong emotional states. These, in turn, can affect our moral responses and even alter our attitudes

In the secular age, religion can no longer deliver on its promise of redemption. Art, philosophy, literature, and music must take their place. Culture must take over the sense-making work of Scripture. It is only the products of our imagination that can save us from the specter of nihilism and anomie, Nietzsche argues.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra written by Nietzsche is a work that can be read as a self-help parable. Its protagonist, a prophet called Zarathustra, having lived as a hermit and in complete seclusion for many years, decides to descend from his mountain and to teach the people his doctrine of the Übermensch, or superhuman. He tells us to strive to rise above our human limitations, to aim higher, and to dream bigger.

He defines superman in the following terms:

I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?

All creatures hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and do you want to be the ebb of this great tide, and return to the animals rather than overcome man?

What is the ape to men? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just so shall the man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. . . .

Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman—a rope over an abyss

In the West today, hyperindividualism reigns supreme. Self-realization is one of our most cherished aspirations, and creativity and uniqueness are exalted. In other words, they are now firmly inscribed in our own tables of values. Therefore, the old tables of values can technically no longer be smashed by embracing these now commonly accepted, indeed mainstream, values. Cherishing the imagination and its products today is neither rebellious nor countercultural. Ironically, to be truly original and imaginative today, we would have to challenge these very values.

Persevere

Fortitude entails a steadfastness of purpose combined with courage—more precisely, the courage not to allow adversity to turn us away from our goals. We might now describe this quality as perseverance. Perseverance denotes our ability to continue with a task even in the face of obstacles or setbacks. We might also speak of resilience, tenacity, drive, and resolve. Grit and growth mindsets are other more recent framings that capture our capacity to keep going in spite of repeated disappointments. But perseverance is also connected to two ethically more complex notions: willpower and effort

The psychologist Carol S. Dweck has coined the notion of the growth mindset—the belief in our ability to learn and to develop our skills. This mindset, she argues, has a crucial impact on our capacity to evolve. It entails stretching ourselves, seeking challenges, persevering, and learning from failure. Many other psychologists emphasize the importance of learning from failure as a key determiner of persistent improvement

Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People describes his own method as a principle-centered, character-based, ‘inside-out’ approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness. Quoting Aristotle, Covey emphasizes that we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. As his title indicates, habits are powerful routines that determine how successful we are in our lives. Because habits are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character and produce our effectiveness . . . or ineffectiveness. Covey understands habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. In other words, habits determine what we do, how we do it, and our basic motives.

Like Peck and Peterson, Covey, too, believes in discipline. Discipline, he reminds us, comes from disciple—disciple to a philosophy, disciple to a set of principles, disciple to a set of values, disciple to an overriding purpose, to a superordinate goal or a person who represents that goal. If we are effective managers of ourselves, our discipline will come from within

The most reasonable conclusion is arguable that we should take a measured and humble kaizen approach to our own improvement, valuing gradual and incremental change for the better, however small that change may be.

Mentalize

Key to Carnegie’s (How to Win Friends and Influence People fame) method is the art of mentalizing—that is, stepping into the other person’s shoes, trying to see the world from their point of view, and mobilizing empathy.

According to Machiavelli (the author of ‘The Prince’), it is generally safer to be feared than loved. This is because human beings are ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly, covetous, and as long as you succeed, they are yours entirely; they will offer you their blood, property, life, and children.

As shameless everyday Machiavellians, for example, we might do the following: Above all, we would strive to appear to be kind and always pay lip service to the virtues of the day, even when, out of the public eye, we would be prepared ruthlessly to defend our position of power. Although extremely image-conscious and concerned with what people think of us, we would not aspire to goodness as a value in itself. Instead, we would live by the idea that effectiveness is the best measure of success, and that success trumps goodness every time. 

Those of us in leadership positions would ensure that our colleagues are sufficiently loyal and happy that they do not rebel against us; we would reward achievement and try to keep people on our side. At the same time, we would make it known that disloyalty will be punished. We would surround ourselves with good people, but not with people who are more accomplished than we are and who could become rivals. We would make decisions swiftly and confidently, not hesitating to throw former friends under the bus, and always keep an eye on which side our bread is buttered. We would never apologize, fiercely attack anyone who dares to criticize us and seek to destroy their reputation rather than engage with the content of their criticism. The Machiavellian model, in short, might be effective if our sole aim is power, but is not to be emulated if we wish to sleep soundly at night.

Another self-improvement genre that enjoyed a surge in popularity in the early modern period is courtesy literature. Courtesy literature teaches courtiers good manners and morals, with a new focus not only on social etiquette but also on the more superficial aspects of human interactions such as witty chat and sharp dressing. The most famous examples of the genre include Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (1528) and Giovanni Della Casa’s Galateo: The Rules of Polite Behavior (1558).

Castiglione places a special emphasis on the importance of entertaining and elegant speech needed for courtiers. Eloquence requires knowledge, wit, a smooth flow of information, as well as current and nonpretentious diction. Witty and stylish speech should be peppered with well-turned metaphors and accompanied by certain movements of the entire body, not affected or violent but tempered by an agreeable expression of the face and movement of the eyes giving grace and emphasis to what is said

Personality became the new cornerstone for self-improvement. Personal charisma and the powers of persuasion became increasingly essential skills that people needed to possess in order to thrive in the new economic order. 

Carnegie also advises us to praise rather than criticize if we wish to change other people’s behavior Another important component of the art of persuasion is to secure attention and vividly dramatize our ideas: You have to use showmanship, Carnegie urges. The movies do it. Television does it. And you will have to do it if you want attention. This advice is endorsed still today, for example by the journalist and communication expert Carmine Gallo, author of Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds

In Instant Influence and Charisma (2015), the British hypnotist Paul McKenna outlines various concrete strategies for boosting our charisma and our power to influence others. ​​If we want others to like and trust us, we need above all to reduce our difference by amplifying what we have in common. This includes aligning our physiology with that person—echoing posture, gestures, speed of movement, even the pace, tone, and volume of our conversation partner’s speech. Blatant copying, however, is to be avoided in favor of subtler forms of mirroring. McKenna, too, advises us to pay close attention to other people’s metaphors and styles of expression. We should also seek to ask questions aimed at finding out what their core values and beliefs are, and then respect these.

At the heart of Machiavelli’s, Castiglione’s, Carnegie’s, and McKenna’s advice, however, resides a very simple lesson: if we want anything at all from others—be that simple to be liked, or to achieve other, more specific outcomes such as being feared, securing favors, exerting influence, or selling something—we need to take the people with whom we interact seriously. We must grace them with genuine attention. We must listen to what they say and to how they say it, understand what they want and ​​fear most, and communicate in a language that is similar to theirs. We must, in other words, mentalize.

It is, finally, also simply a very hard truth to know others. While Carnegie’s belief that appreciation is what all of us want most is certainly true to an extent, it does not capture the complexities and nuances of our many other needs. It is hard—very hard—to imagine what others really want, not least because they often don’t know themselves.

Be Present

In essence, mindfulness is about relearning how to live in the here and now. It encourages us to direct our attention fully and nonjudgmentally to whatever task we are currently performing. It asks us to cultivate our ability to focus on the present by training our minds not to flit feverishly from our past to our futures, chasing after every thought, however trivial. Rather than getting lost in the content of our thoughts, it asks us to become aware of their movement. At its apex, mindfulness resonated with so many of us because we clearly felt we had lost the ability to live fully in the present moment.

Seven mental attitudes are additional core pillars of mindfulness practice. They are non-judging, patience, a beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go

The outcomes of mindfulness meditation are unpredictable. We may well become less stressed and more focused, but what we do with our enhanced energy is by no means predetermined. We may become more productive and add more value to the companies for which we work, or we may gain the courage to quit our jobs, or finally to confront difficult bosses and demand changes in our organization. 

If there is a lesson in all this, it is that self-improvement matters enormously, not just at the level of the individual life but at that of society as a whole.​​As the long history of self-improvement demonstrates, changing ourselves can take many forms, some more suited to achieving a fair and just society than others. Today’s self-help industry is one of those forms. But it, too, is multifarious. Knowingly or unknowingly, it draws on a long and vibrant tradition and articulates in new ways the ten abiding themes of the ancient art of self-improvement.

Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact.” by Phil M Jones

 Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact.” by Phil M Jones.

The worst time to think about the thing you are going to say is in the moment you are saying it. This book prepares you for nearly every known eventuality and provides you with a fair advantage in almost every conversation.

I’m Not Sure If It’s for You, But

This rejection-free approach creates a simple outcome. One of two things happens: your listener leans in and asks for more information because they are personally interested, or, in the very, very worst-case scenario, they say they will give it some thought.

EXAMPLES

Here are a few examples to help you in your daily routine:

I’m not sure if it’s for you, but would you happen to know someone who is interested in (insert the results of your product or service)?

I’m not sure if it’s for you, but we have plans on Saturday, and you’re welcome to join us.

I’m not sure if it’s for you, but this option is available for this month only, and I would hate for you to miss out.

Open-Minded

When introducing a new idea, start with, How open-minded are you? This will naturally attract people toward the very thing that you’d like them to support. Everybody wants to be open-minded.

EXAMPLES

Here are a few examples of the words in practice:

How open-minded would you be about trying this as an alternative?

Would you be open-minded about giving this a chance?

How open-minded are you about increasing your monthly income?

Would you be open-minded about seeing if we could work together?

What Do You Know?

To influence others, you must be aware of how to control a conversation. One way of regaining control is to move the other person’s position from one of certainty to one of doubt.

EXAMPLES

Examples you could use in the real world are...

What do you know about us, our business, and the way we do things differently?

What do you know about everything that has changed since (insert event)?

What do you know about how things really work here?

What do you know about the benefits of (insert product sector)?

These questions allow the other person to realize their opinion is perhaps not correct, and they can quickly become far more receptive to change.

How Would You Feel If?

It is the meaning of this word [motivation] that creates the true base for understanding all areas of negotiation, influence, and persuasion, and you should explore it further if you would like to perform at your peak.

The real world tells us that people will work far harder to avoid a potential loss than they will to achieve a potential gain.

Examples might be something like...

How would you feel if this decision led to your promotion?

How would you feel if your competition passed you?

How would you feel if you turned this around?

Just Imagine

In fact, for a decision to come true, you must have first at least imagined yourself doing it. Have you ever been in a situation in which you have said, or even just mouthed, these words back to somebody else: I just couldn’t see myself doing that?

EXAMPLES

Here are some examples:

Just imagine how things will be in six months’ time once you have implemented this.

Just imagine what your boss would say if you missed this opportunity.

Just imagine the look on your kids’ faces when they see you achieve this.

Just imagine the impact this could have.

Creating pictures in the minds of others is done by telling stories. When you hear Just imagine, the brain pictures the very scenario you are creating.

When would be a good time?

One of the biggest reasons your ideas fail to get heard is that others tell you that they just don’t have the time to consider them.

By using the preface, When would be a good time to...? you prompt the other person to subconsciously assume that there will be a good time and that no is not an option.

EXAMPLES

Examples for you to use include...

When would be a good time for you to take a proper look at this?

When would be a good time to get started?

When would be a good time to speak next?

I’m guessing you haven’t got around to 

By pushing for the negative scenario, you get people to rise to the positive or to tell you how they are going to fix the thing they said they were going to do.

EXAMPLES

Here are some examples:

I’m guessing you haven’t got around to looking over the documents yet?

I’m guessing you haven’t got around to setting a date yet?

I’m guessing you haven’t got around to making a decision yet?

Simple Swaps

The psychology behind this technique, which involves turning an open question into a closed one, results in you receiving a guaranteed outcome or answer.

A simple change of wording puts you in control. Swap the phrase, Do you have any questions? with the improved, What questions do you have for me?

A mistake many people make is asking, Can I have your phone number? When you ask somebody, Can I have your...? it creates a permission-based resistance in the other person, which makes it harder to get what you hoped for since a yes or no response is required. It can be seen as an invasion of privacy. Instead, ask the alternative question, What’s the best number to contact you at? results in people effortlessly giving you the information you requested.

You have three options

Of those three options, what’s going to be easier for you? Finishing with another set of Magic Words means they have to pick one of those options.

There are two types of people 

There are two types of people in this world: those who judge something before they have even tried it and those who are prepared to try something and base their opinion on their own experience.

There are two types of people in this world: those who resist change in favor of nostalgia and those who move with the times and create a better future.

You should be able to see the pattern in the examples and understand how the options are clearly stacked in favor of the decision you would like them to pick.

Something for you to think about as a reader is that there are two types of people in this world: those who read books like this and do nothing and those who put what they read into practice and enjoy immediate results.

I Bet You’re a Bit Like Me

This set of words is possibly one of my favorites because it can help just about anybody agree to just about anything. It is even more powerful in a conversation with a stranger than it is with somebody you already know.

When you are talking to a stranger, the conversation needs to move easily, which means it typically follows the path of least resistance.

Example:

I bet you’re a bit like me: you enjoy working hard now, knowing that it will pay dividends in the future.

I bet you’re a bit like me: you hate watching trashy TV in the evening and would rather work on something beneficial.

The Magic Words I bet you’re a bit like me often result in the other person comfortably agreeing with you.

If... Then

When they made conditional statements like these to you, chances are that you believed them. These statements hold power over our beliefs and actions.

As a consequence, creating a scenario using the preface if and adding a second scenario with the preface then means that people are highly likely to believe the outcome.

If you decide to give this a try, then I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Don’t Worry

Don’t worry is particularly useful in high-stress scenarios when confronted with someone who is panicked—it puts people at ease.

You know when you can see and feel the anxiety in somebody, when they are uncertain about what to do next or perhaps even fearful. These two Magic Words provide instant relief, and you can typically see the change in the recipient.

Don’t worry. You’re bound to be nervous right now.

Don’t worry, I know you don’t know what to do right now, but that’s what I’m here for. I’m here to help you through this process and overcome all the hurdles as they crop up along the way.

Don’t worry. I felt just the way you feel right now before I started, and look at me now.

Most People

Indecision is the biggest thing that stands in the way of progress, and these words can help jump people out of procrastination in a flash.

When you tell people what most people would do, their brain says, I’m most people, so perhaps that is what I should do too.

EXAMPLES

The examples for this are endless:

What most people do is complete the forms with me here today. You then receive your welcome pack and we get you booked in for a launch.

Most people put the words most people into their daily conversations, and most of those people see an immediate positive effect.

The Good News

These words provide you with a tool to spin a negative into a positive using a technique called labeling.

By prefacing things with, The good news is..., you cause people to face forward with optimism and zap any negative energy out of the conversation.

You can use this same principle with two more words when faced with people who give excuses or reasons as to why they are not ready to move forward.

What Happens Next

You want them to commit, but following all of this relationship building and imparting of knowledge, the conversation grinds to a stop with nobody leading the actual decision

What happens next is... This is a perfect way of linking all of the information they need to make a decision, the information you provided when you presented to them and bringing them through to the completion that needs to follow. So, what you do is create a scene. You do not ask them what they would like to do; you just tell them what happens next.

It is your responsibility to lead the conversation, and following the sharing of the required information, your role is to move it toward a close.

Finishing this process with a question that is effortless to answer is the key to gaining a rapid response and a positive outcome.

The easier the question is to answer, the easier you gain your decision.

What Makes You Say That?

Objections are a common part of everyday life. We face indecision from others in our personal and professional lives and quite often find ourselves having to accept another person’s idea.

Success in negotiating is all about maintaining control in a conversation, and the person in control is always the person who is asking the questions.

Here are a few examples:

The customer says I need to speak to somebody else before I make a decision about this. You say, What makes you say that?

The customer says, Really, I don’t have all the money right now. You say, What makes you say that?

The customer says I’m really not sure I’ve got the time to fit this in around what I’m doing right now. You say, What makes you say that?

This shift of control now leaves the other person obligated to give an answer and fill in the gaps in their previous statement.

Before You Make Your Mind Up

Moving somebody from a no to a yes is nearly impossible. Before you can move someone to full agreement, your first action is to move them to a position of maybe.

Look, before you make your mind up, let’s make sure we’ve looked at all the facts.

Before you make your mind up, why don’t we just run through the details one more time so you can know what it is that you are saying no to?

Before you make your mind up, wouldn’t it make sense to speak to a few more people about the difference this could make for you and your family?

If I Can, Will You?

Have you ever been in one of those scenarios in which your prospect or customer pushes back with reasons as to why they cannot do the thing you would like them to do?

Perhaps they are looking for you to make a change from your standard terms or they would like you to offer an improved price.

If I can pick you up and drop you off at home, then will you be able to be ready for seven pm?

You have the power in these situations to remove the barrier by responding with a powerful question that eliminates the other person’s argument.

Enough

This next word relates precisely to scenarios in which you are looking for others to make decisions on quantity or level of service.

It’s all about making it a lot easier for the other person to reach a little higher than they may have done otherwise.

In face-to-face discussions with a customer, the dilemma often arises over how many bottles they should purchase, and the choice typically sits between two and three bottles. Instead of a detailed analysis of the benefits of three bottles over two, you can easily simplify the decision with the direct question, Would three bottles be enough for you?

In every set of circumstances in which you involve yourself in the decision-making process, you have the power to influence the actions of others.

This use of words drives the recipient to answer the direct question, and yes becomes the path of least resistance.

Integrating this principle into all conversations involving your business can have a huge impact on your results. Just imagine if every transaction contained one more unit.

Just One More Thing

Using the Magic Words Just one more thing keeps the conversation alive and can help you avoid leaving with nothing.

A Favor

People say thank you when they feel they owe you something. This is the best time to ask for someone’s help.

Would it be okay if I gave you a call next week to find out how the chat with Steve went?

It is now time to do yourself a favor and look at all the things you can be asking of others, gaining their commitment before they even know what that thing is.

Just Out of I am not saying that people should feel rushed into decisions. It’s just that my experience tells me this statement rarely means they are heading away to do a detailed analysis of their decision. They are just pushing their decision away to another day.

Examples include...

Just out of curiosity, what is it specifically you need some time to think about?

Just out of curiosity, what needs to happen for you to make a decision about this?

Just out of curiosity, what is it that’s stopping you from moving forward with this right now?

Asking big, brave questions is exactly what you need to do to become a professional mind-maker-upper.

Final Thought

With all these words to consider, I am sure you are now aware that reaching for the right words at the right time can make all the difference. There is one more thing I want to share with you, something that isn’t necessarily a magic word.

It is something, though, that can make a huge and profound difference to your level of success when you impart your knowledge and wisdom to others.

Give an answer that is simple, effortless, positive, and uplifting, and watch how it stuns people into a positive decision.