Today I’d like to start by sharing an inspirational quote:
“If you feel you’re under-motivated, consider this: the word ‘motivation’ is used only by people who say they don’t have it. People who are ‘motivated’ rarely use such a term to describe themselves. They just get on with the task at hand. ‘Lack of motivation’ is an excuse: it’s giving a name to not just getting the job done.”
I read that in Derren Brown’s book, Tricks of the Mind. Brown seems like somebody I might have become in another life, had I only craved attention instead of shying away from it. And so when I read Brown’s quote, I nodded along and said, “Hmm that’s interesting. Maybe that’s even profound. Hey maybe there’s hope for me!”
Well, it wasn’t really me saying that. It was the little angel who usually sits upon my right shoulder.
“Psst, you there,” said the little devil who usually sits upon my left shoulder. “You wanna go smoke some cigars and drink some hooch? Or do you wanna hear why that D. Brown quote is bunk?”
“Err no,” I said. “This quote is inspiring. Please don’t ruin it for me. I’d like to believe it. Plus it makes sense. After all, if motivated people don’t know the feeling of being motivated, clearly it’s not a real thing.”
“Well let me ask you this,” said the little devil. “Do you know any 9-year-old kids?”
“No.”
“Well pretend like you do. Or just think back to when you were 9. Do you ever remember waking up in the morning after a blessed 10 hours of deep sleep… jumping out of bed… and with a stretch and a big smile on your face, saying, ‘Boy I feel so healthy today!'”
“Oh no…”
“Yeah, that’s right. Kids don’t talk like that, at least not the vast majority, the ones who have been perfectly healthy their whole life. But does that mean that there is no such thing as health? That you can’t be in good health or in bad health? Or by extension, that there’s no such thing as motivation and lack of m—”
“Get thee behind me Satan!” I yelled. But my mood was already spoiled and the quote above was ruined for me.
Maybe I managed to ruin it for you as well. If so, it was all for a good cause. I just wanted to illustrate the destructive power of analogy.
Fact is, Brown might really be right. There might not be any such thing as motivation.
But the fact he tried to prove it in a specific way (“motivated people never use the word”) was easy to spoil with my analogy to kids and health. And maybe, just maybe, your brain made the same leap after that which my brain did.
“Well, health is real… and if health and motivation are alike in this one way… then motivation must be real.”
But that’s not proven anywhere.
Anyways, now I’m getting into ugly logic which is really not what persuasion or this email are about.
I just want to point out that, if you want to persuade somebody of something, or if you want to dissuade somebody of something, then the most subtle and often the most persuasive thing you can do is to take two pushpins and a piece of string.
Stick one pushpin into an apple. Stick the other into an orange. Tie the string between the pushpins. Make it tight.
And then hold up your creation to the world and say, “Draw your own conclusions! But to me, these two look fundamentally the same! Just look at the string that connects them!”
Anyways, D. Brown does not talk much about analogies in his Tricks of the Mind. That’s his only omission. Because this book really has everything you need to persuade and influence — and from somebody who is both a serious student and a serious practitioner of all this voodoo.
In fact, the last time I mentioned this book in one of my emails, a successful but low-key marketer wrote in to tell me:
John!
Maybe you didn’t get the memo! You can’t tell people about Derren Brown’s “Tricks of the Mind”.
It’s against the rules.
As a friend of mine said, “That’s too much in one book. Don’t give the chimps tools.”
LOL
Well, maybe my mysterious reader is right. So don’t buy a copy of Derren Brown’s book. But if you do want occasional chimp-safe tools from that book, or from other valuable persuasion and influence sources, then you might like my daily newsletter.