We talk to ourselves and others on a regular basis yet rarely consider the impact of the structure of how we ask. I heard this recently at my grand-daughters christening and thought I’d share it to start this article:
So I say to you:
Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives;
the one who seeks finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.Luke 11
Please remember you ALWAYS get what you ask for.
This statement may seem far reaching, but I invite you to read this article and come back to the statement again; it will mean something new to you.
What are presuppositions?
Our language is magical as it has the ability to express more than we intended. Presuppositions are what has to be presupposed in the statement for it to be accepted e.g. “the cat sat on the table” presupposes there is such a thing as a table, a cat and a relationship between the two called sat. This seems obvious enough but how often have you not communicated the message you intended? Or believe the message was misinterpreted? What had been ‘presupposed’ from your communication for it to be interpreted in that way?
Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society, the way that a child catches measles. But people with understanding realize that their presuppositions should be “chosen” after a careful consideration of which worldview is true.
Francis Schaeffer
In this article I plan to discuss how to use your language more powerfully by seemingly simple changes in the structure. You will grow to be amazed the difference these changes make for both yourself and those you communicate with; maybe you’d like to improve your sales or maybe you’d like to improve your impact as a coach or therapist; maybe you’d like to manage your staff with more ease. Read on, practice and smile to yourself at how you can become more purposely influential.
Can you turn out-dated goal-Setting into effective ‘directional language’?
Since Napoleon Hill first penned his classic book in 1937, it has been commonplace to use goal-setting and affirmations to help shift your mind-set. Standard self-help books would encourage you to say “I am” affirmations like, “I am definitely going to make £100,000 next year.” I’m suggesting there is a better way to use your language.
What if you turned these desires and goals into questions? What if it was twice as effective and twice as useful to ask yourself the following:
- How is it that I’m going to make £100,000 next year?
- What am I going to produce that will create the value to earn me £100,000?
- How easy would it be to earn £100,000 this year?
- How much fun can I have while earning lots of money?
These types of well-crafted questions actually pull your unconscious mind in a specific, creative direction. The great thing about direction questions is that they leapfrog your current belief systems, and propel you forward to finding solutions that would have previously gone unnoticed. These are only a few samples of what is a very specific structure I will call the ‘Directional Language Skills’.
How I discovered the ‘directional language’ technique.
When I was a young engineer, I noticed some managers and sales people seemed to get what they wanted without effort and others had to force it. But how did they do it? I started to notice what was called ‘presumptive selling’ which presumed the outcome e.g. “which day would best suit you to meet up next week?” This application of the idea was the basis of what I now call “Directional Language Skills”.
It is also referred to as “embedded questions” when training in NLP (Milton Language).
Hijacking your head for happiness
In order to understand why the ‘Directional Language’ works so well, it helps to understand how your brain really works. My aim here is not to discuss in depth brain science, you can research that yourself; my aim is to extract the relevant information which you can apply to your life, today.
One of the most interesting areas of brain research came when they discovered and labelled an area of the brain commonly called the R.A.S. (Reticular Activation System).
The R.A.S. is not one nerve cluster or organ. It’s an area where dozens of neuron pathways intersect with various functions. Think of it like a telephone switchboard where only the most important calls are allowed to get through to the MD of the company. Other, less urgent calls are sent to the department heads and other staff. All the calls get handled, but not directly by the MD. Your conscious mind is the MD in this metaphor. Your unconscious is the rest of your staff, managers, and workers who diligently work day after day. Learn to ask questions that engage your RAS to pay attention. Your own voice works best and can get straight through to the MD.
Remember sitting in a classroom for an hour? You thought you were listening because you could see them and hear their voice. However, at the end of the class you got up, walked out the door and you have very little, if any, memory about what you learned. That is because, if the teacher was not engaging enough to you, you disengaged and you began to daydream. You went to a happy place and thought about your upcoming date this weekend etc. etc. Daydreaming is self-talk, which shuts the Reticular Activating System off and makes it difficult for you to retain what the teacher is saying.
Affirmations have a negative effect
Affirmations are deceiving. You might say to yourself, “I am skinny. I am good-looking. I am rich.” And your mind is thinking, “No, you’re not, you liar!” Right?
Affirmations aren’t congruent. Affirmations have sort of a mixed result. Some people say they work, but some people say they don’t because you really need to change the belief systems at your core, and then also understand that you need to take gradual steps, so that you can begin to notice things.
The easiest way to change belief systems is to ask better questions, and the results will erode old beliefs.
Your brain looks where you point it
When you ask a question your brain has to look for answers so if you ask “Why do I struggle with this?” your brain has to look in the big box marked ‘struggle’ to answer the question. It’s the same when you ask “What is another reason to be happy?” you brain has to look in the big box marked ‘happy’. Which box would you prefer?
The structure of a well–crafted, effective question
Don’t create a question which results in internal criticism. Avoid questions like, “How come I’m fat?”
If I say “How come I’m fat”, what answers will I get? My brain will give me many reasons why I’m fat. What’s worse, the reasons I get from the sentence structure presuppose and confirm the belief that I am fat. Not great…
What I’d like you to do is read the list of questions below and decide whether or not they are effective and useful questions.
- Why do I keep spending all my money?
- Why do I have no self-control?
- Why can’t I get a raise?
- Are these good questions? Yes? No?
Those are terrible questions! In fact, you will notice all of the above questions start with ‘why’. In general, I avoid questions with ‘why’ and you should, too. While there might be a question that contains the word ‘why’, which will be empowering, in general you could replace the ‘why’ with ‘how’ and create an even better question.
Our minds are excuse-making machines. They release what they are fed. Now, you have to choose questions wisely. My advice is that you take control of your mind or else it will control you. Richard Bandler once said “Many people are prisoners of their own brains”. This is so true, but now you are developing the skills to break free…
Some key principles to build from:
Principle #1: Embed positive presuppositions
The word ‘presupposition’ comes from the word presuppose, or ‘before the idea in question’. Consider the question, “When did you last make a cup of tea?”
If you answer with a time or date, you’ve lost in both cases. The instinctive answer is to come up with a date. It’s a loaded question, which can’t be answered without incriminating yourself, my wife used to catch me with it often.
For more examples of a negative slant just listen to news interviews. Today it was announced Amazon will be using drones to deliver parcels. The News guy asked “Now Amazon will be delivering all across the country using drones, how soon will it be used by terrorists to bomb us?”
This same type of linguistic trickery can be used for good, on your own brain. I asked a client recently “what can you do to help yourself relax more easily?” To answer the question they had to accept they are relaxing already and it is within their control to improve at it.
So, lesson one…make sure your question presupposes that the answer exists, and that the answer is based on something positive. Even without a profound presupposition, the mere fact that you are asking the question presupposes that an answer exists.
Principle #2: Avoid the negative
Do not frame the question in a negative sense.
Using words like NOT, CAN’T, WON’T, and DON’T usually elicits reasons why you do NOT have something, as opposed to finding solutions as to how you can get something. For example, the following are terrible questions, which only create more reasons to get depressed:
Why can’t I ever get ahead? Why won’t anything good ever happen to me? Why don’t I have any money? Why don’t women find me attractive?
The only answers you would get from those crappy questions are answers that CONFIRM your worst fears and doubts. Don’t do that.
Principle #3: Frame the question to look for answers from the present or future
This is essential; because you want to move toward what you want, not look back at what you did wrong in the past. The question of “Why am I such a failure?” only brings up past events or past emotions, which confirm the disempowering presupposition that you are a failure. While not a good question, “How can I avoid failing in the future?” would be better than the first question, but still crappy.
Why? You have to visualize what you don’t want (failure) in order to make sense of the question at all. You only want images in your head that elicit positive emotions. If failure is an issue for you, take the opposite of failure, which is success, and build a question for what you are moving toward, not away from. “How can I be even more successful this month?” This presupposes that you are successful already. This looks forward into the future. And there is nothing negative in the sentence.
Principle #4: Avoid the word ‘Why’
The final general rule is to avoid the word ‘Why’ in your ‘Directional Language’ sentence structure. There are exceptions to this, but ‘Why’ sentences are fraught with the tendency to turn negative, not positive.
Remember, you can think of the outcome as a puzzle which needs to be solved; the puzzle of how to be more fit, happier, richer, or get a new car. A puzzle has lots of answers and puzzles rarely have an A or B answer. (Remember option C+ discussed earlier?)
Simple yet powerful question structure
Start to build your own powerful directional questions with the presuppositions you want accepted. Here is the formula: Question word (how etc.) + pronoun (I, you etc.) + problem to solve
Eg “How can I improve my understanding of presupposition power?” – this question presupposes you already understand it to a degree and that improvement is possible. Much better than “why can’t I grasp this?” – that looks for a lot of bad evidence.
Conclusion
‘Directional Language’ is a simple technique that you can use every day, for the rest of your life. No matter how successful you become, there is always something more that you want. More love. More comfort. More time with your family. More happiness…
If all this technique does for people is to move them from the attitude of “problem frame” into the attitude of “solution frame”, then I have succeeded. It’s all about asking the right question.
