It is easy to convince people you like of something you fundamentally believe in (you, your idea, your thought, your strategy).

The reality of course is, that we find ourselves more in situations where we need to influence people that we don’t click with about plans we don’t 100% believe in. And that’s the real struggle.

Perhaps you had those grueling lunches with people before where you needed to “talk straight” with them, because you really didn’t get along, or because the person wasn’t doing a good job, or somehow you both had attitude problems towards each other. Often times, these conversations have sobering outcomes. That is because while on the surface we try to be polite (“I really do think you do a great job”), we internally may hold the same thought (“He is an idiot”). The problem is human beings can smell this subtle bullshit. It is because there is no such thing as a poker face and our micro body language always betrays us by revealing how we really think (ie blinking the eyes in the wrong moment) and hence we cannot make the other person adopt to our liking.

To really convince others, we must manipulate our own mind. Frankly speaking, it’s really the only thing we are capable of influencing. We need to put in the hard work of convincing ourselves first (Along the lines of “Fake it ‘til you make it”). We need to positively repeat-preach the good things about our colleague or about our idea to ourselves, because only then do we extrude the positivity in our tone and body language that is so crucial to shift other people’s mindset.

By the way, manipulating one’s own mind is probably the greatest skill an entrepreneur needs to exercise. With a failure rate of 99% and often times dealing with capricious market conditions, how crazy do you need to be to ever decide to start your company? Only people who can muster the mind energy (over a really long long time) to convince themselves that they will be one of the lucky 1% and who have the capability to tell themselves that they are totally amazing are the ones that leave their compfy jobs. I wonder, why is it that men seem to think that more of themselves than women? Thoughts?