It was just another day in the lives of the cast of Inception, a group of dream mentors adept at extracting the ideas and goals of their victims and replacing them with fake ones. They are bodyguards hired by wealthy corporations to extract secrets from their competitors.
Inception may be just a fictional movie, but the idea of planting an idea in someone's mind is not. You can't necessarily access someone else's dreams, but you can access their subconscious, where their most influential ideas originate, and where the impact can be achieved by planting new ideas.
You can do it yourself, but first you have to understand the consequences. Like any powerful tool, it can be used to inculcate new ideas for good or evil, so use it to help others help themselves, and you will have a hidden influence on their success because using it carelessly risks destroying trust and important relationships.
Here are 3 steps to installing new ideas in others and affecting their lives:
Step 1: Finding the primary goal:
When Cobb and Arthur, two of the film's main characters, begin plotting an idea to enter Fisher's mind, the son of a wealthy energy magnate, their first task is to find out the most important thing in his life, which is to win his father's approval, and once they know that, they will have exactly what they need to build an entirely new understanding of that approval desire.
To understand someone's greatest hopes and dreams, you have to understand the essence of who they are. Thinking about your own goals is what builds your character, and every action you take in your mind assesses whether it helps you achieve what you really want out of life.
When you are so busy thinking about a goal, you will do all kinds of crazy things to achieve it that normal people would seriously consider and refuse to try. However, that won't change anything in your doing what you want because if it succeeds, it will be the greatest achievement of your life.
Everyone has this goal, but some hide it better than others, and if you want to find it, the only way by which you will succeed is to listen ten times more than talk, as people will tell you exactly what they want out of life if you just listen to them. It's common to talk about your life and your own desires, but to get to know someone, you have to shut up long enough to hear what they have to say.
So, nurture your curiosity, ask a lot of questions, and listen attentively to others. We are always hesitant to tell each other exactly what we want in direct terms for fear of being looked down upon, but we will allude to it in everything we say. So, learn to read between the lines, and you'll see beyond the face value of someone's words, and you'll understand the most pressing demands and desires of their lives, too.
After you get to that fact, you will have the key to their thinking, and then you can begin to form ideas that will help them achieve this without being completely discovered.
Step 2: Create a dream scene
When Cope and Arthur learn how important it is to Fisher to earn his dying father's appreciation, they hire Ariadne, who is an architect, to construct a dream scene through which they will lead Fisher to "find" the idea they want him to do, and they orient him by asking direct questions that lead straight to the answer they want him to reach.
However, the human mind rejects creative ideas that do not come from sincere inspiration. So, if your job is to win the heart and mind of someone who disagrees with you, whatever idea you want to give them shouldn't sound like it comes from you, but rather from within them, and you can do this by framing it in their own language.
If you haven't tried it before, you will be amazed at what people tell you about themselves when you listen to them. As the late writer Dale Carnegie used to say, "The sweetest voice a man can hear is his own."
It is human nature to want to get your point across, but it is foolish to do so before you understand how others will understand you. Everyone has a unique view of the world that determines exactly how they will receive an idea. If you listen long enough, you'll discover exactly what the world looks like to someone. Once you realize that, you'll have all the tools you need to send the right signals and ask the right questions that fit your idea into their dream landscape.
Step 3: Plant the idea
When the Inception team takes Fisher deep enough into his dream landscape to plant their idea into his subconscious, they have to be very careful about how they present it to him. They can't serve it to him on a platter, but they have to neatly place the idea bits all over the scene, and lead Fisher to them in the hope that he'll want to find them by himself.
So, be careful how you present your idea. Don't go out and show it, but guide him through it and let him find out. The best way to know how to do it is to play the fool. When someone comes to you asking for help with something, you may have exactly the idea they need to solve their problem, but if you show it to them directly, they won't follow through because any success they have will be your achievement, not theirs.
Instead, put the pieces together and pretend you can't put them together yourself. If you send enough hints, he can make the important connections that lead him to the solution on his own. Suddenly, it will look like his idea instead of yours, which will make it more effective. Don't give credit to yourself with the idea, but congratulate him on discovering it himself.
Use this technique for good or bad:
If you've read this now, I'm going to assume you'll likely have one of the following opinions at this point:
- You think this is great, and you can't wait to try it.
- You think this is manipulation.
Remember that you can make this tactic like any other, as it is a tool that can be used for good or bad, and what constitutes the two always depends to some extent on the person making the judgment. Also, it is not just a useful tool, but it is required for any form of leadership.
This is what leaders in all walks of life do. They set the direction of the ship for their followers, allow them to make the decisions that get them there, get to know the people who are helping them, know they will receive different ideas, and then create an environment in which they can pool their energies.
You can plan all the instructions and tell people exactly what to do, but you will not be a leader but a trainer, and the influence of the trainer is often limited to the leader. So, do not hesitate to use this technique to achieve your own goals, but even do so with noble intentions.
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