You can make your listener feel an emotion simply by talking about
that emotion.
How and why does this work? Remember what we refer to as The
Pink Elephant Principle: Anything you describe to someone, that person
imagines, simply to understand what you are talking about. The better you
describe that experience, the more fully your listener understands and
experiences it.
How do you describe something well?
1) Specify the experience in terms of the senses. That is, describe
what can be seen, heard, felt tactilely, smelled, and tasted as
part of the experience. Also, describe what can be experienced
internally and subjectively—make an effort to convey every
subtlety and nuance of your experience, no matter how strange
those nuances might seem from a logical, objective
perspective—describe what you imagine, say to yourself, and
feel in your body as you process the experience. If, when you
find yourself falling in love, it kinda-sorta seems as if there’s a
glow around the other person, mention that perception. If, when
you find yourself struck by a wondrous idea, a bing sound goes
off in your head, mention that perception. If, when you find
yourself feeling excited, the feeling is almost as if there are
tingly red clusters of plasma-like energy shooting up from your
palms to your shoulders, describe the feeling that way.
Basically, you should allow yourself to elaborate on every
aspect of the experience as thoroughly as might a wine critic,
savoring a particularly fine vintage. The more you describe, the
more your listener will understand and feel.
2) As you describe the experience, look and sound and act as if
you are feeling the emotional state you are describing. The
more you look as if you are feeling what you are describing, the
safer your listener feels in following that experience. Bear in
mind that people, particularly in English-speaking and Asian
countries, tend not to be very expressive or skillful with the
nonverbal subtleties of communication; the more expressive you
are—the more you look and sound and gesture and act as if you
are intensely feeling what you are describing—the deeper the
emotional response you will elicit. Being very expressive is a
major component of what is sometimes called charisma. On the
other hand, if you don’t allow yourself to be expressive—if you19
don’t show emotion—you will tend to elicit weak or
unenthusiastic responses from people. For that matter, women
tend to desire more emotional expressiveness and intensity
than most men demonstrate—so allow yourself to be more
expressive than you think seemly, because, by and large,
women find expressiveness and “passion” deeply attractive.
Being emotionally expressive makes it much, much, much
easier to get laid.
Let’s suppose you want to get your listener to trust you.
Example: “What’s really great is when you find yourself sharing a
deep sense of trust with someone. Know what I mean? You know,
the kind of trust that feels like there’s this soft golden bubble, this
pool of energy, holding both of you inside, warm to the touch, softly
soothing you and calming you, a feeling so warm and strong that it
begins to flow inside you, deepening your sense of safety and total
trust, expanding, spreading wide like wings, so much so that the
feeling itself seems to say to you, your own sense of what you need
and feel says to you, ‘You are safe, you are protected, you can
open to this experience and feel and accept this experience
completely.’ Now, with me, this feels great—this, with me, is the
feeling. Maybe you feel good about feeling this feeling too. This kind
of trust, real trust, this kind of trust is a great feeling, now, isn’t it?”
At this point, you may be thinking “That’s insane! No woman would
listen to that kind of garbage without laughing at me!” It’s a
reasonable reaction. But it’s wrong—that belief is what keeps men
from getting laid, and keeps the women they meet from feeling the
emotional satisfaction they intuitively know they can have. You’ll
learn more about this kind of language, and why it works, as you
progress further into this book.
Let’s suppose you wanted to make your listener “excited”.
Example of an impoverished, ineffective description: “I had a good
time playing football Saturday. It was pretty exciting.”
Example of a rich description: “I had a good time playing football
yesterday. It was pretty exciting. I was so focused, the experience
was so intense, that everything outside the game seemed to blur.
You know, like the only thing that mattered was the game. And20
everything inside the game got hyper-sharp, all the colors and lines,
all the faces, were just incredibly clear and focused, and the clearer
everything looked, the more I felt pure excitement just ramp up
inside me. It was as if every time I moved in to tackle someone, I
just saw that person as if through a microscope—I could see the
sweat glittering on the guy’s face, the blood under his skin, all the
fear and rage and intensity inside him, you know? Everything
seemed amplified, as if we were all wearing mikes, and there were
loudspeakers in my head, everything pounding and crashing and
colliding—the louder things became, the more exciting everything
became. It was such a rush that I could feel waves of energy—this
is gonna sound funny, but like hot red columns of light were just
shooting from my shoulders to my gut, getting hotter and hotter, as I
felt myself getting stronger and stronger, more and more excited…”
Et cetera. As we’ll explain later, women really like it when you
ramble on and on, even about things that to you may not seem like they
need to be said.
Here’s an example of evoking a state of passion. It dwells on
putting together software, just to remind you that you can use any activity
to evoke any emotional state.
Example of a poor description: “Well, I spent Tuesday night writing
code.”
Example of a rich description: “Well, I spent Tuesday night writing
code. Coding can actually be a very powerful experience—you’re
creating this world of absolute possibility, within which anything can
happen, but you’ve gotta build it out of matchsticks. Some people
may not see how this can be the case, but with me, the more I think
about it and experience it, the more I connect it to a sense of
passion. It can be completely enthralling, like it’s pulling your
attention irresistibly, a whirlpool sucking you in. Imagine building a
skyscraper out of matchsticks. Everything has gotta be perfectly
balanced, perfectly set—and all you’ve got is your own
determination, your focus, your ability—really, your ability to feel
passion. The passion begins with a hard, solid sense in your gut—
and as it grows stronger, this hard dark solid thing begins to feel like
a drum, pounding and pounding, pounding and pounding, deep
inside you. Everything else seems trivial, and your intensity, your
passionate sense that this is hugely valuable and important, gets
stronger and stronger—and paradoxically, the more focused you
are on the experience you’re creating and you’re now inside, the21
more whole you feel. It’s as if in surrendering to the experiencing of
giving yourself completely to this, feeling every part of yourself,
every ounce of your ability to feel, totally devoted to this, the more
you find yourself learning and growing. Every little flickering
character on the screen challenges you to find the one that should
come next—or the one it really ought to be. You’re being
challenged over and over again, and you sometimes want to pound
your fist through the screen, and the screen seems to grow larger
and clearer in your mind—everything seems to be growing larger
and clearer all the time, as you become more and more consumed
by this, in ways that feel more and more intense and rewarding, as
you begin to feel that this aura of pure possibility begins to radiate
out from deep inside you, and your thoughts become as penetrating
and piercing and focused as a laser, able to make anything melt,
through the heat of the desire inside you, and this laser begins to
make you feel more and more in touch with what you truly want, as
everything that it’s melting seems to combine all your doubts and
inhibitions, carving away your fears, refining and strengthening your
excitement and intensity, so as you realize those old things are now
melting inside you, your passion and desire and intensity just get
stronger and stronger, as the laser gets brighter and hotter …”
Yes, that description seems crazy. Still, such language has a
powerful effect on women.
You may have noticed that the speaker mentioned the states he
was trying to evoke over and over again. On the page, it doubtless looked
repetitious. In conversation, though, people, especially women, are usually
quite comfortable with repetition, for reasons we’ll cover later.
You may also have noticed that each state was described in a
number of different ways. That is, the description portrays passion as a
balanced building of matchsticks, pounding drums, a laser, etc. Are these
descriptions logically coherent? Nope—and they don’t need to be. They
just need to paint pictures in a female listener’s mind.
Bad Poetry=Deep Arousal.
You may have also noticed that some of the descriptions present
the symbol as doing different things. That is, the Laser of Passion in the
example above focuses, melts, carves—it’s a Ginsu knife of cheesy
metaphor. Why? For the greatest effect, make every image you conjure up
with words go through at least three transformations, with every
transformation accompanied by some emotional shift.
If you’re comparing surrender to, say, the experience of a droplet of
water, at the moment it crosses over the edge of the Niagara Falls, say22
something like this: “At the moment it breaks from the stream--the moment
its simple, forward progress is interrupted—the moment it breaks from
routine and its old life, there is that moment of shock—but then, as it twists
and turns in the air, as it begins its descent, as it expands and spreads
wide, there is the feeling of discovery, the feeling of possibility. Sometimes,
you know you’re experiencing something intense, and you just have to
open up and take it all in. And as the droplet finally slams into the raging
surface below, its false, internal limits broken as it joins the wider river, it
spreading surfaces are overcome with joy at having been able to
experience this surrender, knowing that the experience will now lead to
even more powerful experiences, just because the experience of surrender
to something powerful and important is now deepening in intensity…”
Talking about a single thing evolving through physical and
emotional states tends to have a stronger effect than talking about a
sequence of unconnected things, each of which happens to occupy
different physical and emotional states. Evolution creates a narrative;
presenting description in the form of a narrative makes emotional
identification easier. The thing which undergoes changes becomes a
character, and therefore “someone” with whom your listener can
emotionally identify.
To evoke a state, talk about it at length and “paint a picture” of the
state with words, while acting as if you are feeling it yourself.
Review
1. To evoke an emotion well, use a great deal of sensory detail. Specify
what was sensed both externally and internally—what you saw as well
as what you pictured in your mind, what you heard around you as well
as what you said to yourself.
2. To evoke an emotion well, look and sound and act as if you are feeling
the emotion you are describing. The better you demonstrate it, the
better she’ll feel it.
3. Describe your images as going through at least three changes, every
physical change accompanied by an emotional change. When a
particular thing undergoes a series of changes, it becomes a character
within a storyline, and a creature with which your listener can identify. In
this way, even inanimate objects can become characters and sources
of emotional identification.
4. Talk and talk and talk about the emotion you want to evoke.
