How You Can Talk to Anyone in Every Situation

2

Chapter

19

It’s all about you

By the end of this chapter you will have a very good understand-

ing of how to create a powerfully confident state before entering

any room or meeting any person.

You might be thinking, ‘This is a strange place to start help-

ing me to talk to anyone in every situation. Can’t we just get

on with the things I need to do?’ Well, we could have done

that but here’s the thing. Your ability to implement the strate-

gies and techniques that we are going to give you will be hugely

enhanced when you are able to do that in a state of confidence.

Doing anything confidently is likely to significantly increase

your chances of success.

But where does confidence come from; what helps us to be

confident and what gets in the way?

Given the extraordinarily powerful influence of our beliefs on

our thinking, our state and our behaviour, it makes sense to

start our journey of exploration here.

Know how you think – harness the power

of beliefs

If you want to become a really confident communicator you

need to have an understanding of what goes on in your head –

and what goes on in other people’s heads: how you and other

people process information and organise their thoughts to

create their unique internal world, and hence their unique view

of the external world.

Why is it important to understand it? Because once you

understand how you create your own thoughts and internal

HOW YOU CAN TALK TO ANYONE IN EVERY SITUATION

20

experiences, it means that you have the choice to change them

if you want to.

So many people we work with believe they have no choice.

Similarly to Catherine in Chapter 1, they tell us that, ‘It’s just

the way I am. I’ve never been any good at socialising/talking to

people in senior positions/getting my point across/being asser-

tive/enjoying parties/talking in a group.’ And they believe that

that’s the way it’s always going to be.

Well, if that strikes a chord with you, we have great news for

you. You can change and you can change easily, if you want

to. But in order to change, you first need to understand how

you are creating the thoughts and feelings that you have at

the moment. And that’s the purpose of this part of the book.

When you understand this process you will know:



how you make sense of all the information around you



how you filter the information around you



how you create your thoughts



how your thoughts interact with your physiology to create

emotions



how your emotions affect your behaviour



how most of this process happens unconsciously.

Our senses are bombarded with information. In every moment,

millions upon millions of pieces in the form of sights, sounds,

touch, taste and smell surround us. However, we can only pay

attention, consciously, to approximately seven pieces of infor-

mation at once, give or take two. That is, we can pay attention

to five pieces on a bad day and nine on a good day. Do you

remember playing the memory game as a child? Up to twenty

random items were put on a tray and you had a few minutes to

memorise them. It was rare that anyone remembered more than

eight or nine items.

Try it for yourself. How about attempting to name all the alco-

holic drinks you can think of. Just think about that yourself for a

few moments.