How we talk to ourselves and to other people influences how we process the world FAR more than most people realise. I learned this years ago when studying Ericksonian hypnosis and Speed Seduction. Major Mark Cunningham once said ‘Naming something makes it real. Describing it brings it to life’. By discussing emotional states with a target (having first established value in her eyes), an accomplished seducer can begin to take control of his target’s internal representations. Decisions are state-based, so if you want to influence someone’s decision making, first influence their state.

My SS training awakened my mind to languaging in wider fields of influence than just seduction e.g. using language skills in job interviews, training people, giving presentations and writing. It also tweaked my perception when it comes to listening to other people. I am, due to my language training, constantly running analysis programs in my sub-conscious to find the hidden meaning of communication. It happens automatically now.

Typically, this will be noticing what a person says, how it ties to their body language (congruence), their tone, their background (country, region, class, probabilistic social milieu etc) their current state and so on.  Having this ‘insider’ information can be vital in gaining leverage over someone when it comes to persuasion, influence, rapport-building, and seduction.

As I mentioned, this linguistic analysing is something I am always doing, and it extends beyond the particular to the ordinary – from seduction situations to more general communication. Recently I heard the following interesting linguistic constructions:

• “The 11.30 train on platform 2 has been RETIMED to 11.55. This is due to track maintenance.”

What they seem to mean is DELAYED. But ‘retimed’ sounds so much more positive and blame free. This is frame-setting. Think of a watch being set to the correct time. It’s now become a service they are doing for you and me, and no longer a fuck up on their part (thanks Huddersfield Mark for your spin on this!).

• “This film is RELEASING July 23rd. “

I heard this at the cinema. Releasing WHAT? They mean ‘being released’, but using a passive seems to lack impact or energy, perhaps. No one is doing the action. Better to suggest the film is doing the releasing all itself. Then, if it fails to recoup its investment, no one knows which company did the releasing? Also, ‘releasing’ makes it sound imminent and, thus, more powerful – like it is happening right now (thanks Mark, again). Linguistically weird but it might catch on in our non-blame culture.

• “Troops in Afghanistan will be DRAWN DOWN by 2015”

Don’t they mean WITHDRAWN, but want to keep it positive? It amounts to the same thing – goodbye lots of troops, time to come home. I am willing to bet there will come a time when ‘drawn down’ will, itself, have gained a negative connotation and it will need to be replaced as a phrase with another one, less pejoratively tainted one for future war troop withdrawals.

The same thing happened with words for describing black people – n**ger, Negro, black, coloured, African American and on it goes. Each time a word gets a negative association, a new term comes along. Will I be starring out ‘negro’ in a few decade’s time? The same happens with swear words. ‘Bloody’ used to be very strong. Now, you’d get away with it in parliament without a bit of trouble.

The moral of the story? Realise that WORDS can influence people, that their connotations change and it pays to be aware of how words affect the listener. This lends to mastery of reality-based linguistic communication.

In NLP there are the concepts of ‘uptime’ and ‘downtime’. Let’s cut through the jargon and decode this – ‘uptime’ is when you are focused on the outside world, paying attention to the responses you are generating and processing all that external input. ‘Downtime’, on the other hand, is when you are inside your head running internal dialogues and analysing what happened – not good when in the field.

When one is in the field, you want an external focus because you need to react to the people around you. This can mean, noticing their current state as input for your moving them to a state closer to where you want them to be. The choices people make are mostly state dependant and, just like a kid who knows the right moment to ask their parents for a bike, you’ll find there are right moments to go for the close or to move your target to the next stage in the influence or seduction process. These moments are state dependant and your job as an influencer as to both recognise and create these states.

When one is not in field, one wants an internal focus so you can review what happened and learn from it. This can mean reviewing your mistakes or noticing what worked well. It’s important to be as honest and objective as you can about what you did well or badly. By objectively reviewing how your sarges went you can best learn from your mistakes and from your achievements. In consequence you keep going with what works and cut out what is not paying dividends.

In my own experience, I was good at learning from my mistakes but looking back, I see I could have learned as much from analysing and reviewing what was successful. If it works, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, spend some time honestly analysing why it did not work. Was it your delivery? Was it used at the wrong time? Was it simply the wrong line or technique for that situation? Recording yourself can help in this objective analysis, after the fact.

If you are not sure where you went wrong or why it worked well, what can you do?

The first step for me is to look through my previous experiences in my journal. I keep a paper and online journal to look back on what has worked for me before (to do this more often) and what has led to outcomes I don’t want (to avoid these behaviours).

In addition to this, I will post online for additional feedback, especially if I can’t understand a situation. I mostly post on mASF (www.seductionfast.com/discussion). There you will find lots of advice on what you did well and how to improve. Aim to find people with a successful reputation and experimentally implement their advice.

It’s worth mini-trialing your mistakes during the week, especially if you mostly party at weekends.

It is better to meet people all week so you are used to meeting people any time. Don’t see weekends as a special occasion (thus higher pressure at weekends). Having said that, you might find it easier to try out revisions of your technique during the week.

Let’s say your main sarging days are Friday and Saturday then you post about your experiences on Sunday, you get feedback on Monday and Tuesday. You then implement those changes to your game on Wednesday and Thursday in preparation for the coming Friday and Saturday. That is the basis for a solid learning curve.

Learn from your mistakes through reviewing them and objectively implementing changes.