Verbal

Assassin

George Hutton
Mind Persuasion

©MindPersuasion
Introduction
Human Communication
Scientific Explanation
Building States
Sudden Attacks
Pre-Framing
Meta Model
The Subjective Human
Cause Effect
Post Journaling Practice
Fighting Fire with Fire
Cause Effect Killers
How to Practice
Deeper Than You Imagine
Swiss Army Brain
Negative Belief Destruction
Worst Case Scenario Planning
Human Soft Spots
Deadly Language - Theory
Deadly Language - Practice
Deadly Language - Examples
Book of The Dead
Enemies Closer
Stare of Death
Defense Against the Dark Arts
Training for Presuppositions
Gray Area Transitions
Deadly Metaphors
Metaphorical Pacing
Final Words
Contact
Further Study
Mind Persuasion Books
Introduction

This guide will teach you a full range of skills to defend yourself from
verbal attacks. Even those statements that seem to be polite on the surface
but leave a bad taste in your brain. Some insults are blatant and overt.
Others a very, very subtle. So subtle than even the insulter doesn't really
know they are insulting you. Many people move through the world without
concern for others. They bump into us, step on our toes, and make us smell
their horrible breath. You may know some of these people. There may be
something about them that bothers you, but you just can't quite put your
finger on it. The way they compliment you, it feels as though they are also
insulting you at the same time. This guide will take you through a wide
range of exercises, designed to strengthen your inner game as well as your
surface level communication. Very much like physical self-defense, you
may never need to use the verbal skills in this guide. Simply by
understanding the structure of language, you will be able to see who is
really insulting you, and who is just exposing their inner fears and
weaknesses. With practice, the skills in this guide can turn you into a verbal
assassin. Or if you are feeling generous, you will learn some very simple
questions to ask that will send your attacker fleeing. Much like martial arts,
there is a whole range of techniques. On one side of the spectrum, you can
be as vicious as you want, and make your attacker terrified of even thinking
of you again. Or you can use their energy against them, without needing to
even lift a finger. Just simply take their covert insult and carefully fling it
back at them so they feel its full force on their mental state. Or you can
simply stand there and wonder what they mean, knowing full well they only
have that one insult. By practicing the exercises in this guide, you will gain
an enormous amount of confidence. This is very much like martial arts.
Most people practice self-defense not because they envision getting into a
fight. Rather, they know it is good exercise. They know it is good for their
self-confidence. They know that simply by knowing how to defend
themselves, they will project a completely different energy that will
significantly reduce the chances of getting attacked. The techniques you
learn in this guide will work the same way, only much better. Consider this
simple example. Suppose you were a high-level black belt in any martial
art. And you were by yourself in a bar, in the bad part of town. And some
hoodlums decided to mess with you. Just like in the movies, you easily took
care of them, leaving them in a heap on the floor. This would send a very
clear and specific message to the rest of the patrons. Don't mess with you!
Anybody who was thinking of giving you any trouble would know be much
less likely to. This is the same thing that will happen once you learn these
skills. Only you will be able to demonstrate your verbal prowess much
more covertly. You won't ever need to get into a shouting match, or even
trade clear insults for people to get the message that you will not take any
insults. Not even subtle ones. How is this? Physical violence is far from
subtle. Watch any primate cage in the zoo, and you can see the signs.
Violence between primates (and humans are primates) is clear. Strong eye
contact. Chest beating. Loud shouting, and then punches. Many alpha types
exhibit his behavior, which is a very ancient and very primate level display
of aggression. When it comes to physical violence between humans, it's not
much different than down at the zoo. But verbal challenges are much more
sophisticated. The battles that happen in the boardroom are much subtler
than the ones down at the tavern. It's game you need to know how to play. If
you don't, you may be getting assaulted, and yet don't know it. This guide
will teach you how to see verbal assaults, even if the verbal assaulter
doesn't yet know it. How can this be? Human language is very less thought
out than physical behaviors. We speak without taking time to choose our
words. We hear the words others speak to us, and don't take time to parse
them before responding. Much of human communication happens
subconsciously and non-verbally. But we tend to ignore all that is beneath
our conscious awareness. You will learn some powerful exercises in this
guide that will train you how to radiate a much different non-verbal energy.
A much more powerful non-verbal energy. You'll learn to read the non-
verbal energy of others with much more accuracy. When others attempt to
slight you with their words, you'll know exactly what they are doing. You'll
be able to accurately measure their inner strength and come up with a
consciously chosen response. You can turn their energy against them, you
can simply absorb it and send completely different message, or you can
throw out a couple of carefully chosen statements that will absolutely
obliterate them. Very much like well-trained fighter can choose to respond
to a weak blow. You can block their hand and use their punch against them,
sending them tumbling to the floor. You can watch them hit you, and then
look at them as if you say, "OK, and?" which will generally send them
fleeing. Or you can block their punch and send one of your own, only one
much more effective.

Gain Immense Confidence

Simply practicing the exercises in this guide will give you a ton of
confidence. A whole new world of human communication will open to you.
You will be much more adept at reading people. You will project a
completely new level of self-confidence. This will make you much more
attractive and give you a stronger frame. It will remove any uncertainty in
many social situations that you may now feel.

Never Need to Use

Just like physical skills, you never need to use this. Just like physical skills,
training yourself with these skills will give you much more choice than you
have now. In many situations, these skills will give you a boost your social
skills. Not only can these be used defensively, they can also be used
playfully. Trading insults with friends is a fine way to pass the time. After
practicing the skills in this guide, you will take your playful insults and put
downs to a completely new level. Many of these same skills you'll find are
the perfect party skills. Used defensively, they will send your enemies
fleeing in terror. Used socially, they can cause your friends to buckle over in
laughter.

How to Read

We recommend reading this guide first. There will be plenty of exercises

presented throughout. It's best to wait until you finish this before choosing
which exercises to start with. These are very much like physical exercise.
The more you do these, the more you will benefit. And much like physical
exercise, once you start doing them, you will hopefully keep doing them
every day for the rest of your life. These are not the kinds of skills you can
read about and then be able to do. They are easy to understand, but
complicated to use in real time without a lot of practice. So, take your time.
Read through and understand. Then find a few simple exercises to start as a
daily practice. As those get more comfortable, increase your daily routine.
Once you establish an easy to adhere to daily routine, your daily
experiences will be your best guide.
Human Communication

As mentioned before, most communication is non-verbal. We can approach

this idea from two sides, empirical and theoretical. Plenty of studies have
indicated that less than ten percent of communication is verbal. We can
easily imagine this with a simple mental experiment. Think of your favorite
actor. One that makes you want to see a movie simply because this actor is
in it. Now imagine how believable they are when they play their part.
Chances are the words they say are not that complicated. Simple ideas,
simple sentences. Yet when they say them, we truly believe that are who
they are pretending to be. Now imagine a particularly terrible movie you've
seen recently. Perhaps one you started watching on a streaming service but
turned off because it was so terrible. Now imagine a movie that was terrible
simply because of the acting. The actors were saying the lines, but they
simply weren't believable. Now try to imagine the difference between a
good actor and a terrible actor. An A-lister who makes millions per film,
and an unknown who can only be found in straight to DVD movies that are
never rented. If the only aspect of communication were the words
themselves, then anybody could be an actor. So long as you could
memorize the lines, you'd get a job. But millions of young men and women
dream of becoming actors, but few ever do. Consider the craft of being an
actor largely due to their skill in non-verbal communication. At this point,
we don't have any idea exactly what that is, but there is something much
more to human communication than just the words. A famous movie that
has been made several times and under several different names is the
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Aliens, or pod people, who come to Earth
and replace humans with creatures that feel no emotion. These pod people
speak and talk without human emotion. In the early stage of these movies,
the same scene is played. Somebody knows that something is wrong with a
close friend or family member. They can't put their finger on it, but it's not
them. They look like them, talk like them, have the same memories of them,
but it's not them. There is something different. That something different is
the deep emotions that we convey beyond our words. Our facial
expressions. Our body language. Our voice tone. The pauses in between the
words. The movements of our eyes, and where we point them when we are
speaking.
Theoretical

Humans have been humans for 50,000 or 100,000 years. Before that we
were proto-humans for about two million years. The changes have been
slow. It's not likely that you could find a mother and father who were proto-
humans, devoid of language, who had a kid that was just like us. The
changes were very slow and very gradual. Somewhere along the line, likely
less than 100,000 years ago, humans started speaking to one another. Many
animals communicate through sounds, but humans have a very complicated
and very intricate language. This language is used to create beautiful works
of fiction and poetry that can be translated into different languages and
retain its meaning for thousands of years. The meaning we can convey with
words to each other is immense. Yet at the same time, we have been able to
communicate very well, long before spoken language became part of our
skill set. We split from chimps (we share a common ancestor) six million
years ago. Chimps have a very complex social structure. They have very
complex relationships with one another. They've been studied extensively
and have highly evolved political systems. Every group of chimps has a
clear leader, an alpha. When the alpha is getting old, there are very deep
Machiavellian machinations that go on for months before there is a
transition of power. These are just as complex as modern human elections.
All of this is done without spoken language.

Language Just the Surface

We still retain all this deep communication. This is why A-list actors get
paid millions. They are experts at conveying deep meaning beyond the
words. Words to human communication is like icing to a cake. You can
enjoy a cake without icing. But if you have icing without a cake, it's just not
the same thing.

Social Status

One thing that is clear in both humans and lower primates like chimps is
that social status is of extreme importance. Studies of humans show that
whenever a group of strangers is put together, we will always organize into
a hierarchy. We seem to have a sixth sense of knowing who is above us on
this hierarchy, and who is below us. Whenever this happens, it happens
quickly and without much speaking. So, unless we are going to imagine
some kind of subconscious telepathy going on, the only way we can sense
our respective levels of social status is through our non-verbal
communication. Because most of us don't think consciously about this, we
can refer to this as subconscious communication. In this guide, we will use
both non-verbal communication and subconscious communication to mean
the same thing. All the communication that happens beyond words.

Pecking Order

Every prison movie has the scene where the new guy is paraded in and the
inmates all jeer and heckle him. This is to illustrate a deep scientific
principle. Most animals exist in a hierarchy. The term pecking order comes
from chickens. A group of chickens kept in a pen will self-organize into a
hierarchy. They stick to this hierarchy when they eat. The alpha eats first,
and everybody else in order of social status. When a new chicken is
introduced, they must figure out where that new chicken is in the pecking
order. This is done quickly and effectively. All the chickens take turn
pecking at the new comer, until the new comer's place in the hierarchy is
established.

Criminals and Manipulators

Some people are said to attract manipulators. Without knowing much about
non-verbal communication, this can sometimes seem mysterious and even
mystical. It's as if manipulators seem to have a sixth sense of knowing
exactly who they can take advantage of, and who they can't. This isn't likely
something that they are consciously aware of. It's likely something that has
been unconsciously trained into them by their parents or siblings. They
have a type, whom they feel most comfortable with. This type ends up
being somebody they can easily manipulate. Criminals do the same thing,
but they do it with much more conscious awareness. Pick pockets and
muggers also have a type. But they look for them specifically. They can
watch somebody walk for only a few seconds and know exactly who will
fight back, and who won't. They know who will be too terrified to give the
police an accurate description. They combine this with targets who likely
have the most cash in their wallet or purse. They know this because they are
experts. These are simple things that anybody can learn given enough
practice. It is easy to learn because all of us, all the time, are projecting
volumes about who we are. About our self-confidence, about our own
accepted place in the pecking order, and whether or not we will put up a
fight. Consider this idea. It won't be a very comfortable idea, but it will be
helpful if you can accept it. Any time anybody gives you any trouble,
physically or verbally, consider that they only do so because on some level,
conscious or unconsciously, they feel they can get away with it. Nobody
starts a fight with somebody unless they think they can win. Once you
accept this, the next step might even be harder to think about. But if you
can, this will be the first step in never being manipulated or taken advantage
of again. Next time you are around other people, start to judge others. See if
you can separate the people around you in two groups. Don't worry, this is
only a mental exercise to build strength. The two groups are those whom
you think you can insult, and get away with, and those whom you'd be too
terrified to try. Practice this idea whenever you can. If you can't bring
yourself to overtly judge others like this, imagine where you might lie on
any hierarchy. Near the top? Near the bottom? Somewhere in the middle?
By simply thinking about this and measuring this, you will gain mental
strength.
Scientific Explanation

There is a fun card game that you may have played before. Everybody
draws a card but doesn't look at it. Instead, they hold they card up to their
forehead, facing out. You can see everybody else's card, but you cannot see
your own. Then everybody tries to wager on whether they think their card is
the highest. This is done by watching others faces when they look at their
own card. You look at other cards, and your face will show a reflection of
those card's value. You can also see other's faces as they see your card. With
a little bit of thought, this is a useful game to calibrate the facial expressions
of your friends. This is also a playful to purposely project false facial
expressions. If your friend is showing a king, you might look at his card and
purposely pretend, through your facial expressions, that it's a two. This type
of reading and measuring is happening all the time. This is easy to
understand by imagining a time when proto-humans hadn't yet learned to
speak. Being efficient as a group was imperative. We'll start with one
animal and extrapolate. Every animal needs calories to survive. But it also
needs to expend calories to acquire those calories. We can describe the
efficiency that it does like a business. Businesses use a term, ROI, which
means return on investment. If a company spends a million on the back end
and gets back a million and a half on the front end, that is a positive ROI of
50%. On the other hand, if a business spends a million on the back end and
gets back only seventy-five million on the front end that is a loss. A
negative ROI of 25%. We can extrapolate this to animals and see how each
individual animal must always have a positive ROI. If an animal expends
1000 calories in a given day but only acquires 800 calories, it can't keep that
up for long, or else it will starve. Many animals (like us humans) have
developed the ability to keep plenty of calories in reserve. So, we can
imagine that all animals must have a long-term average of a positive ROI.
You can survive with a calorie deficit for a while, but once your reserves
(fat stores) deplete, you'd better find some food. With large groups, this is
the same. A group of a hundred proto-humans living together must work as
an efficient team, otherwise there's no point in being in a group. Since we
humans are extremely social animals, we can imagine that we've developed
a very strong set of social instincts to keep any ancient groups of humans
highly efficient. This means that we have a very effective way of
maintaining a very tight social hierarchy. A modern example would be a
sports team. With a clear captain in charge, and everybody else with a clear
position and duties, the team would be much more effective as a singular
entity.

Social Status Measuring

This human social status measuring system is going on all the time.
Between strangers, between friends, between enemies. Sometimes this is
slow and drawn out, such as between two executives competing for a
promotion. Sometimes this is quick, such as when two people approach on
a narrow road, and one must yield. Consider that any insult, overt or covert,
is an attempt to establish or demonstrate social status hierarchy. This is
enjoyable when it is between friends. When we playfully trade insults, it's
much like lion cubs play-fighting. But when it comes from somebody we
don't see as a friend, especially when it is done in front or others, it is a
clear attack on our social status. Its main purpose is to send a clear message:
"I have higher social status than you." From a purely structural level, it is
the same as those prison scenes when the new guy comes in and is pelted by
the current inmates. They are all saying the same thing: "I have higher
social status than you."

Inner Game Strength

Because social status is a function of non-verbal communication, (we

frequently self-organize into hierarchies without needing extended
discussions) you will gain a great deal of confidence by only practicing the
inner game skills. It is very possible to never be overtly insulted again,
never receive any verbal attacks, by only practicing the skills to build up
your inner game. By projecting strong enough inner game resolve, and
enough social status, you can significantly decrease the chances of ever
receiving even a stray glance from a would-be attacker.

Outer Game Practice

You will, however, need to interact with others. Some might think they can
bully you, so they may toss out some subtle and covert insults. When this
happens, they might not consciously be aware of it. For most people, the
idea of their social status and that of others will only ever live in their
subconscious awareness. The games people play with acquaintances is very
subtle and subconscious. Some people tend to act abrasive only to see who
can push back and who can't. Some are obvious in this, some are not. We
will learn plenty of very subtle, very powerful verbal responses that will not
only demonstrate your social status to them, but to everybody else that is in
earshot. Make no mistake, much like our mental acting experiments, these
simple statements and questions are only effective if they are on top of a
very strong and practiced inner game.

Form and Function

If you are happy, you will smile. But if you are unhappy yet force yourself
to smile, you will slowly start to feel happy. Form and function often follow
each other. If you have strong enough inner game, you rarely need any outer
game skills. This is like a very skilled A-list actor being able to get away
with ad-libbing their lines, which happens frequently. However, simply by
practicing a few simple outer game behaviors, you will strengthen your
inner game considerably. You will, however, have to decide for yourself
where you are most comfortable. Depending on where you lie on the
introvert-extrovert spectrum, the shyness-confidence spectrum, and many
other spectrums, you may need to do a little or a lot of the inner game
exercises before you are ready for the outer game exercises. Understand
that your skills and confidence will accelerate the quickest with some
combination of inner game and outer game practice. When we say outer
game, we refer to the behaviors you purposely exhibit around others, both
words, body language, facial expressions and body language. When we say
inner game, we refer to everything inside. Your mental behavior and
feelings, and any memories or emotions that are referenced either
automatically or deliberately from your external experiences.
Building States

Your inner state will be a very important factor in how well you handle any
slights or outright insults. When we think about being insulted, we can
create two broad categories. One where you pre-frame situations to
preclude insults from happening. This is when you purposely and
consciously create and hold a frame of mind before entering any dangerous
situation. This when any potential insulter will notice your state, likely
unconsciously, and not make any overt attempts. If you are generally
passive, or introverted, and not assertive, this will take a lot of conscious
effort at first. It will take a lot of time and mental effort to create and hold
any internal state. The good news is that by building and holding strong
mental states, it becomes easier. Done with enough consistency it will soon
become second nature. In this we mean second nature literally. Your natural
state is your first or primary nature. The way you operate now. Another way
to refer to this is your factory settings. We can look to martial arts as an
example. Most people never learn how to fight. So, if they do ever happen
to get into a fight, they will fight very haphazardly and not very efficiently.
This is their first nature. But after many years of training, they will learn
physical self-defense to the point of unconscious competence. Their second
nature will be very strong and effective. Consider that building up a strong
mental second nature will take some time. It won't be nearly as easy and
reading some advice and then going out and doing it. Building a strong
positive inner state to the point where it is second nature will take time.
When you are just beginning, you'll need to learn how to create these strong
inner states under two circumstances. The first we mentioned above. When
you are going into a situation where you have a suspicion you will be
treated with disrespect. The second is much more difficult. This is when
you are treated with disrespect completely unexpectedly. With a strong
enough second nature, these will become less and less of an issue. With a
stronger and stronger mental state as your natural setpoint, unexpected
attacks will come less and less. But until you get there, we will need a
strategy for dealing unexpected verbal attacks.

Building Inner States

Your greatest resource will be your existing memories. Any memories
where you felt calm and capable of defending yourself. Even better if you
were defending yourself and others. This will take time. It will take time to
find these memories, it will take time to strengthen these memories.
Eventually, with enough practice, you will get to the point where you can
fire off a trigger and feel a very powerful sense of control and safety in any
situation, so long as there is no threat to your physical safety. In all
instances, we speak only of emotional and mental safety. To start, you'll
need to spend a few minutes every day writing experiences. Start as young
as you can possible remember. The idea is to find any memories, as early as
you can remember, where you felt safe and secure because of your own
actions. Not when you were protected by an adult or a physical barrier.
When you defended yourself verbally against any verbal attack or insult.
Any time you spoke up and defended yourself using words. When
somebody wanted you to do something, and you refused, and they backed
down. Any time you got into a shouting match and won, not due to the
loudness of your words, but the words themselves. Any time you said
something to somebody, that somebody couldn't come up with a response
and they left you alone.

One Memory Per Day

This exercise will take a few weeks. The first few days may be difficult. But
the more you write, the more you'll find more of these same memories.
Write out five or six lines of each, just enough so you can set it up, write
out what you did, and how you felt. A few sentences to a short paragraph is
fine. Keep writing them until you come up to the present time. Once you
start to find more and more, you can write more per day if you can. Don't
rush this. Take your time to find as many of these memories as you can.

Decide on The Five Strongest

Find the five memories that represent your best personal memories of
verbal defense. The ones you enjoy remembering the most. The ones that
make you feel the most confident and proud of yourself as you remember
them. Take your time until you've chosen the five best ones. You will be
spending quite a bit of time on these memories, so make sure you choose
the very best.

Write Out One Memory Per Day

Once you've got the five chosen, write out one per day. When you write
these five, write as much as you can. Write in as much detail as you can.
Don't worry too much about being accurate. These memories will serve to
give you strong inner power whenever you need it. The only requirement is
that when you recall these memories, you feel strong, assertive and safe
within your own mind, needing only your words to defend yourself. Try to
write at least a page each day on one memory.

Find A Trigger Event

Once you've written each memory out in detail, find one trigger event or
idea within the memory. It can be a word you said. It can be a visualization
from the memory. It can anything. The only rule is it must be short, and it
immediately recalls the full memory, and all the confidence it brings.

Practice the Triggers

If you need to write each memory out several times, write it out several
times. The goal is to be able to simply think of the trigger and bring back
the confidence as strongly and as powerfully as you can. Don't expect this
to happen on its own. Mentally fire the trigger, and then mentally force the
memory and the feelings of confidence to flood your entire being. Start off
doing this alone at home. Do it sitting down, do it standing up. Close your
eyes, mentally fire the trigger and consciously and deliberately bring back
the flood of memories as strongly as you can.

Put A Trigger on Each Finger

Take one trigger each and put one on one finger each of your dominant
hand. Practice firing five in sequence. Then practice firing all five at once
by making a brief fist. Give this plenty of time. This is something that will
require consistent practice after enough set up.
Practice Firing in Many Situations

Once you can repeatedly recall the emotions at home, practice outside.
Practice in your car. Practice while walking around. Practice while in
relaxing conversations with your friends. Fire your triggers just before you
order from wait staff.

Not A Quick Fix

This will take quite a long time to build. Think of this just like martial arts.
Those who train to a high level of skill don't think in terms of training
"enough" until the results are "permanent." Think of this exercise very
much like physical exercise. It will take time to create, and you will need to
do daily work to maintain your ability to fire up a strong feeling of
confidence in any situation. For the few minutes per day this will take, the
rewards will be enormous.
Sudden Attacks

If you were independently wealthy, you might take a few months or even a
year or so off while you built in the inner states from the last chapter. But
since you are likely a normal human and must deal with other normal
humans only a daily basis, you will need some other skills to deal with
unexpected slights and outright insults. Recall the reason why insults and
slights come in the first place. Their sole purpose is to establish that you are
lower than them on the social status totem pole. Any time somebody insults
you, the actual words are not that important. What is important is you are
caught off guard and are visibly weakened by the attack. When you are
pushed off balance and need a few moments to recover. Once you build up
a strong enough mental state, this will happen less and less. But if you are
like most people, and don't walk around with a collection of strong
memories of assertiveness in the forefront of your brain, we will need
another strategy. A good response in any case is to not respond. Of course,
sometimes you'll choose to not just not get knocked off balance but knock
them over in response. But we need to first worry about not getting knocked
off balance before we come up with strategies of retaliation. A trick we'll
learn here is a self-imposed brain-fade. The idea is to get insulted, and then
look at them as if you don't understand what they just said. As if you
honestly don't know if they were insulting you, praising your or asking for
directions. This will require a bit of practice, but it will easier than building
up strong inner states based on real memories. What you will be practicing
is shifting your focus. The way insults hurt is as follows. They come
unexpected, so they knock us off balance. Our natural inclination is to fight
fire with fire, so we tend to stop, and think about how to respond. But since
most of us can't come up with a comeback relatively quickly, after a few
seconds the damage is done. Comebacks only work if they come quick. The
main purpose of an insult is to knock us off balance long enough, so
everybody can see that we can't come up with a response. This is why
sneak attack insults are so deadly. They are essentially the verbal equivalent
of a sucker punch. Two boxers in a ring fully expect to be punching each
other, so they have their defenses up. But only a trained martial artist can
effectively respond to a sucker punch, and even that isn't always a given. If
somebody wants to deliver a deadly sucker punch, they can. The benefit to
defending against verbal sucker punches is retaliating verbally is not the
only option. To be sure, that is sometimes desirable, to hear an insult and
immediately retaliate with a verbal blast of death. But when we are just
getting started, we have another option. And that is feigned confusion. It's
much easier to fake confusion and misunderstanding than it is to withstand
a verbal hit, recover mentally and then recover verbally. Faking confusion is
much easier. All it requires is a quick retreat and a refocus. Once you get
this tactic down, it is very easy to master.

What Do You Mean?

The easiest way is to quickly focus away from the intention of what they
said and focus instead on the words they used. Insults are designed to hurt
us emotionally. The words aren't really that important. The insulter is
expecting us to be at a loss for words. What they don't expect is that we will
be focusing on the actual words they said. This will only take a little bit of
practice. The structure is simple. Any time anybody says something that is
meant to be an insult, you stop, focus only on the words, look at them
innocently and ask, "What do you mean?" If asked from a genuine place of
confusion, you won't betray a sense of being knocked off guard. Always
remember that much of communication is subconscious to subconscious,
and very little is about the words. When you ask that simple question, you
are ignoring the subconscious intention, and forcing them to explain the
surface structure language.

Always Have A Go-To Confusion Thought

This is much easier to create than a strong mental state. Being confused is
easy. You can practice while watching TV shows. Practice switching into a
confused state whenever you hear one character give another an insult. This
even works if you shift from the hurt state to the confused state, so long as
you do it quickly enough. If you like, you can practice on real people.
Whenever you are in a friendly conversation with somebody (ideally a close
friend or family member) just wait until they are saying something that's not
so important, and purposely place yourself in a brain-fade zone. Just pull
back your attention slightly and then ask, "What do you mean?" Let them
explain themselves and then re-engage with the conversation.
Primate Behavior

This is very similar to a very common response in mammals when they get
attacked, which is to essentially go limp and hope their attackers give up.
The purpose of an insult is to demonstrate dominance. To knock you off
guard so you can't reply. If you only go limp, then they have won. But by
simply asking for clarification, you are essentially forcing them to repeat
their attack. You'll find that most of the time, they won't be able to since
they weren't expecting this response, especially if there are other people
watching. When we get insulted in front of others, it's generally hoped to be
a one-punch-knock out on the part of the insulter. A snide comment, a brief
statement or an outright insult that is designed to demonstrate that they are
higher than us on the social status ladder. But by simply fading your own
brain, and coming back with a genuine, "What do you mean?" This flips the
focus back on them. We'll learn more detailed linguistic strategies later if
they repeat themselves, but most of the time they'll just act like they didn't
mean anything.

Practice Makes Better

This, like most other techniques in this guide, isn't something you can
master after only reading about it. It will take practice. And this technique
will require practice with others before you can use this as a legitimate
defense against actual insults. Start by practicing while watching TV, while
imagining you are in the role of the insult receiver. Practice with your friend
while they are saying something inconsequential. You can even practice
with wait staff. When you place an order, they might ask for more
information (would like fries or baked potato with that), and you can fade
your brain and ask, "What do you mean?" Since brain fades are very
common for us humans, most people will be happy to repeat the question.
Pre-Framing

You can combine the idea from the last chapter as a pre-framing exercise. If
a particular person tends to bully you at work or at school, imagine them
saying something, and then respond by brain fading and asking what they
mean. Pre-framing is a very useful strategy and can be used in a variety of
ways. Generally, it means preparing for all possible outcomes, and
preparing and practicing for any of them. We'll cover many detailed
strategies in later chapters. In this chapter we'll go over some general
guidelines.

Plan for The Worst

This is old advice for a reason. Fate has a strange way of knowing exactly
what we haven't planned for and delivering that to us. If you are going into
a certain situation and going to be talking to certain people, you might be
able to imagine some of the things they might say. But even if you can't,
you can still practice asking what they mean. Always remember that most
communication is subconscious. This means if you fear any outcome, even
if you don't know about it consciously, you will be projecting that fear.
Anybody who is around you will pick up on that fear, at least
subconsciously. If you expect people to be nice, or to not be mean, that's
when mean people suddenly show up. The best way to pre-frame any
situation is to fully address all your fears. This can be very uncomfortable.
We humans have many social fears and addressing them is not something
we enjoy doing. You don't have to dig deep and uncover all your inner
demons, but it will help to think of some things that do have a chance of
happening, that you might not be able to handle.

Worst Reasonable Fears

Imagine being insulted for your clothing, your hairstyle, your shoes, your
speech patterns, anything. Close your eyes and imagine strangers tossing
the worst possible insults at you. Then practice fading your brain, looking at
them, and asking, "What do you mean?" This isn't really designed to
practice anything that might happen, this is to preclude it from happening
altogether. Imagine that people have a kind of sixth sense about the insults
you won't be able to respond to. A way of picking up on your subconscious
energy. When you actually imagine these insults coming, and practice
asking what they mean, this will strengthen your frame, and this will keep
you from radiating that frame weakness. This is the great paradox of our
social fears. The things we consciously fear don't happen. The things that
happen are things that we didn't anticipate. One on level, it doesn't seem to
make much sense. But on another level, it gives us the perfect strategy.
Since our fears never materialize, then it makes sense to consciously
practice them happening, and practice responding to them.

Physical Metaphor

It's easy to drift up into metaphysical la-la land if we keep talking about
subconscious communication. We'll use a physical metaphor to make this a
little clearer. Suppose you were in grade school, and you had a bully in one
of your classes. Suppose you were injured on your right side. And when
you came to school, you were protecting this right side with your right arm,
whenever you walked or talked. This would be a sign to everybody that you
were weak or injured on your right side. Your friends would know to be
careful of that right side. But to the bully, it would be a big fat target. He
would carefully and deliberately maneuver himself, so he could get close
enough to punch you right in your weak spot. What we are advocating with
pre-framing is to strengthen up that weak spot, so you don't project the
weakness. You would walk and stand normally, and the bully wouldn't
notice your weak spot, and he wouldn't know to hit you there. The same
thing happens when we have unrecognized social fears. These weaknesses
are projected subconsciously, and they are picked up subconsciously. This is
why we can attract the same types of manipulative people over and over.
We are subconsciously radiating these complex subconscious weaknesses.
The more of these subconscious social fears we can identify and pre-frame,
the less likely we will radiate weaknesses in those areas. To be sure, this can
take a long time. Some of us have plenty of deep social fears and anxieties
that we'd rather not think about. But the more we ignore these, the more we
are broadcasting these socially. Each of us has a collection of
subconsciously projected strengths and weaknesses. To the extent we end
up with those with overlapping strengths, we will have healthy and stable
friendships and relationships. To the extent we attract those who
subconsciously intend to leverage and manipulate our weaknesses we will
have unhealthy and dangerous friendships and relationships. To the extent
we can identify and pre-frame any social fears, we will preclude those
manipulations and insults from happening.

Practice Daily

Before you go out, think of any people you wish you didn't have to deal
with. If you know some of the things they tend to say to you, practice the
brain-fade response. If you aren't sure, be brave enough to imagine some of
your worst fears for that particular day. Imagine them happening, and then
imagine responding with a brain-fade, "What do you mean?" Just getting
into the habit of pre-framing will help considerably. Most of us just get out
there and hope for the best. But getting into the pre-framing habit will soon
turn into a very powerful skill set. A common fear is public speaking. A
common (and perhaps only on TV) strategy is to imagine your audience
naked. This is supposed to make you feel better by lowering their social
status. But consider doing the opposite when pre-framing. The worse things
you can imagine and pre-frame, the more you'll strengthen your frame.
Imagine being naked and getting the worst insult possible. Imagine standing
there, naked while responding calmly, "What do you mean?" as if nothing is
wrong. This does sound like a very goofy exercise. If you've ever had a
nightmare where you found yourself out in public without any clothes, it is
very common, and very terrifying. But it can also be a very powerful trick
to build up a very strong subconscious frame. If you can imagine standing
naked before your enemies and withstanding all their insults, the real you
will be much more resilient, on a subconscious level. Always remember
that subconsciously radiated weakness will attract insults. The tendency
when fearing insults is to shrink, which will invite them even more. But
when you flip the script, and imagine standing there naked and inviting
insults, prepared to counter all of them (and anything else they may say)
with, "What do you mean?" you will significantly decrease any insult
attraction energy.
Meta Model

One of the most powerful language patterns is also the simplest, and it's
also the one that is misused the most. It's very simple to learn, which
virtually guarantees it will be misused. First, we'll cover the basics, and then
we'll go over several powerful ways to use this. Learning how to use it
correctly will take the most practice.

Vague Language

We humans speak in very vague language. Most of the nouns and verb
phrases we use are very much not defined. Especially when we are hanging
out talking to friends. We use language to convey ideas in our mind. The
ideas we have in mind are ill formed to begin with. For example, let's
imagine you get home from work after picking up some take out. When you
were waiting your turn at the drive through, you probably glanced over the
menu and made your choice. While you did, you likely had tons of other
stuff on your mind. Then you get home, change clothes and fire up your
favorite TV show. You watch TV while eating your take out. The whole
process is done largely on auto pilot. Something you've done many times
before. You had a specific experience. If we imagine some invisible aliens
studying you, they would see and record everything. But the whole time,
while you were watching and eating, your brain was drifting all over the
place. Your boss, your bills, that hot neighbor that just moved in. The idiot
upstairs who stomps around like an elephant. Let's imagine the process of
watching and eating took about an hour. So, there you are the next day,
describing to your friend what you did the night before. What would you
say?

What'd you do last night?

Nothing. Watched TV and ate something from Burrito Barn.

Yeah? Anything good?

Was all right. Show about these cops and this drug dealer guy.
Yeah? What'd you eat?

Couple burritos, some chips.

Cool.

Now, the whole process took an hour. The episode of whatever TV show
you watched took a long time to create. A long time to write. All the
background objects had to be placed perfectly. The director probably took
all day to get one shot perfectly, with the guy in the trench coat walking
across the street in the background. This is what director's do. They spend
weeks on a single episode of a TV show. Yet we watch them and describe
the process with a quick sentence that is essentially meaningless. Most of
the time, this is fine. Most of the time we don't expect a full description.
Imagine the same situation, only this time it was your buddy that ate the
burritos and watched the cop show. Imagine if he spent a minute detailing
every single bite of his burrito. Imagine if he explained every sentence from
the cop show, and every single thing that was going on when they said that
dialogue. That would take a couple of hours, at least. If anybody gave that
much detail to simple questions on a regular basis, they would lose their
friends. They'd be the guy nobody wants to talk to, since a simple, "How are
you?" would end with a thesis level dissertation about the current state of
his mind body system. When humans communicate, the things we say are
extremely vague. Not only are they vague, but there are tons of information
that is left out. Put it this way. Imagine spoken language is 100,000 years
old. That is 0.1 million years. We've been living in groups as proto-humans
for about 2 million years. That means we've gotten along perfectly fine
without language for 1.9 out of 2.0 million years. Only in the last 0.1
million out of 2.0 million have we started using words. This stuff we are
explaining with words is very, very vague.

Socratic Method

The Socratic method is based on the idea than none of the stuff we say can
ever be fully backed up with facts. The idea is that simply by asking
questions, we can eventually find tons of discrepancies in any of the things
we believe to be true. Keep in mind that Socrates was put to death. Nobody
likes a guy who can walk up to the most powerful people in society, and
through some simple questions, demonstrate that those powerful people
don’t really know what they say they know. Now, the Socratic method kind
of assumes that two people are actively trying to find logical discrepancies
in any idea. It's not very useful in shutting down insulters. But the meta
model can be used to achieve the same outcome. To show that nobody
really knows much about what they are talking about. Even asking about
regular experiences, like eating burritos and watching TV, the meta model
can make some quick enemies.

How to Use

The meta model is simple. All you do is find any vague ideas in anything
they have said and ask for more specific information.

What'd you eat last night?

A burrito.

What kind of burrito, specifically?

Um, chicken and rice.

Yea, what kind chicken, specifically?

Huh? Um, chicken, breast, I think?

Cool. How was it cooked, specifically?

Dude, what?

The chicken breast in your burrito. How was it cooked, specifically?

On a stove?

Huh. Barbecued, baked, fried, grilled?

Dude, what?

What kind of rice, specifically?

Dude, I don't know! Burrito rice!

What kind of tortilla did they use, specifically?

Dude! A burrito tortilla! WTF!?

Of course, if you used the meta model like this, you'd lose all your friends
in a hurry. So, we recommend the meta model is best used as a mental tool.
A great way to get used to it is to start to think about things people are
saying in terms of the meta model. This way any time anybody insults you,
or even says something kind of negative, you can immediately apply the
meta model. Think about all the vague parts of what they just said, and
instead of responding emotionally (like they are hoping) keep yourself in
your conscious mind and attack the words they just said with some internal
meta model questions. One quick way to defuse any insult or comment you
don't want to leave hanging there is to simply put yourself in a rain-fade
mindset, repeat what they said, and then ask:

What do you mean, specifically?

If you're clowning around with your friends, you can pretend to be one of
those AI robot archetypes who doesn't understand human emotions. With a
little practice, you'll find this simple phrase, so long as it is backed by
emotional neutrality can be very effective in quickly defusing any negative
comments or insults made by others. Very much like a physical martial art
move where the bad guy comes running at you screaming, and you barely
move and send him flying past you. You can practice this while watching
TV as well. Turn off the sound, and flip around until you find two people in
a heated argument. Then before you turn up the sound, choose which person
you will be, and then turn up the sound. As soon as the other person says
anything confrontational, hit the mute button and practice shifting into
brain-fade mode and then meta-model-curious mode and then say calmly,
"What do you mean, specifically?" This is just the beginning. It turns out
that our buddy Socrates was pretty accurate. We humans really don't much,
even though we are sure that we do. And it's easy, and fun once you see
how easy it is to destroy the thoughts of your enemies.
The Subjective Human

There is a famous problem in psychology called the Wason Selection Task.

We won't go over the problem here, but we'll explain the punch line. It's
given in two parts, usually to psychology students. The first part is in a very
dry, purely logical situation. Cards and colors and numbers. The students
are given a clear set of rules, and the setup of the cards. They are then asked
what they are supposed to do with the cards based on the rules. Less than
one out of four can figure out what to do. But then the exact problem is
given again, but in a social setting. Instead of looking at cards, you are a
bouncer looking at people drinking. And the rules are the drinking rules.
Over twenty-one for alcohol. In this scenario, nearly everybody gets the
answer correctly. But in reality, the problem is exactly the same. When
presented in pure logic, few people get it. When it's presented socially,
everybody gets it. So, this is a clue that our brains are only logical within
certain situations. We pretty much suck at pure logic in the abstract. There
are all kinds of other psychological problems that indicate our human
intentions have a much stronger bearing on our thinking than pure logic.
There are plenty of examples from game theory where people choose not
based on logic, but whether they can get one over on their opponent. For
example, some problems indicate that we'd rather win and get less money
than lose and get more money. For our purposes, it's enough to understand
that very few of our decisions are based on logic. Nearly all our decisions
are based on our own subjective biases and preferences. This makes perfect
sense. Essentially, we are biological organisms. We are programmed with
tons of instincts that help us survive. To the extent our thinking helps us get
our needs met, it is useful. So, we can imagine that if we have illogical
thinking that helps us get our needs met, this will be more compelling to use
than logical thinking that doesn't get our needs met. And since this is a
guide on linguistic defense tactics, we can assume that the primary
objective of anybody when they come at you with any negative language is
not to assert the superiority of their logical thinking. It is to demonstrate
that they are higher than you on the social status hierarchy.

Common Illogical Patterns

This is why it is almost certain that any "argument" will use plenty of the
classic "non-logical" structures. Straw man, ad hominem attacks, etc. This
is because the point of the argument is not logical, but to assert social
dominance. My idea is better than your idea. But just like two fighters will
fight based on who has the strongest punch, two linguistic fighters will fight
based on who has the strongest illogical arguments. They toss out an ad
hominem, and you toss one back. This is the classic school yard tactics of
calling each other bigger and bigger poopy-heads. We can safely assume
that any insult or slight as the very ancient might-makes-right strategy
behind it. Another common strategy that doesn't work is to try and use
actual logical to explain why the other person is incorrect. But when we
realize that the main point of the argument is to demonstrate social
dominance in front of others, this strategy is certain to fail, especially if it is
accompanied by weak subconscious enemy. Unless you have a social circle
of Vulcans, fighting a might-makes-right insult with pure logic is not the
best strategy. But we don't have to use logic to demonstrate that no matter
what they say, it is essentially meaningless. In a way, it's kind of a trick.
They are using words, but their real subconscious intentions are emotional.
Lucky for us, they don't know that. They really believe the words are doing
the trick. That's perfect. We'll focus only on the words. We will focus so
much on the words we won't use any emotions. In fact, we will focus so
much on the words that we will actively ask them to help us understand
their words. And it won't take long before we find out that Socrates was
right all along. Nobody really can defend what they are saying very much.

Stick to Structures

We only need a couple of very simple structures that will help us do that.
Imagine if you had a secret device, one that momentarily made all your
enemies’ muscles suddenly relax for two seconds. You could easily
withstand as many physical attacks as they could launch. As soon as they
flexed, you'd push your button and they'd go limp. Eventually, they'd give
up. This is what these basic structures will do. No matter how many times
they attempt to assault you, you simply toss out one of these structures and
they'll go limp and eventually give up. We've already covered a couple. The
brain-fade followed by, "What do you mean?" Add in a bit of meta model
and add the word, "Specifically?” But once you get some practice, you'll
see how much more fun you can have. The next step is to simply look at
their statement and find any kind of label. Anything of the form:

Y is X

You are dumb

That idea is silly

Your pants are lame

This is stupid

Whenever they say anything like, "Y is X" all you have to do is say this:

What is it about Y that makes you think it's X?

This simple sentence will force them to explain themselves. Whenever

somebody tosses out a simple, “Y is X” statement, they think of is as a
singular verbal blow. They see you get into the elevator. They sneer say,
"Those pants are lame." This is a singular verbal jab. It exists in their brain
as a singular verbal jab. But if you train yourself to reply quickly with a
simple, non-emotional:

What is it about my pants that makes you think they are lame?

It does a lot. One, it flips it back on them. Two, it takes what the thought
was a singular thought, and breaks it in half, which will confuse them.
Three it posits that it is their opinion that your pants are lame, and they
must explain what it is about your pants that made them conclude they are
lame. None of these things are things they thought of when they tossed out
the insult. So, it will throw them off balance, and that pause will put all the
social pressure on them. The best part is no matter what they say, you can
simply toss this simple structure right back at them.

Your pants are lame.

What is it about my pants that makes you think they are lame?

What? They're blue!

Huh. What is it about them being blue that makes you think they are lame?

What? Because YOU'RE lame!

Huh. What is it about me being lame that makes you think my pants are
lame?

You can do this forever, or until they give up. Always remember that the
main purpose of any insult or slight is to knock you off balance so they can
assert their social dominance. So long as you maintain your cool, keep
flinging these simple questions back at them, they will get more and more
confused. Just like our imaginary attacker who kept coming at you only to
find himself in a limp puddle on the floor. And like the rest of these
techniques, these are fantastic to practice with your friends. No matter what
they say, just take it and send it back in the same form:

What is it about X that makes you think Y?

Cause Effect

With what we've covered so far, with a little practice you will never fear
getting insulted again. Even if some stranger approaches you on the street
and flings a horrific insult your way, with practice, you'll be able to simply
ask what it is about you that makes him think that about you. We should
warn you, that while this can be a lot of fun, it can be dangerous. If some
stranger comes up with an insult and you deflect it, it can make them angry
enough to cross the threshold into physical violence. It's a critical idea to
know your enemies. If that guy in the elevator who insulted your pants is
your boss, it might not be such a good idea to make him look like an idiot.
Whenever using defensive tactics of any kind, it's best to use your best
judgment and knowledge of the situation. That being said, sometimes you
want to go a little further than just tossing your victims to the side.
Sometimes you want to block their attack and then give them the verbal
equivalent of a death punch to the throat. In order to do that, we'll need to
understand a bit more about the structure of human thought. When being
purely defensive, it's enough to ask the attacker to explain why they believe
their attack is linguistically valid. But when you want to go on the
offensive, it's essential to understand the structure of human thought.
Similarly, in martial arts, you need an understanding of your opponents’
soft spots. You'll get a much better result by punching an attacker in the
throat than you would by punching them in the forehead.

Cause Effect

Scientists believe that we have a cause-effect generator in our brains as a

matter of survival. Much of our thinking is not based on mathematical
accuracy. For example, let's imagine we are an ancient caveman walking
through the jungle. We smell something a bit strange, and then we hear a
tiger growl. Luckily, we run away. But we've also created a cause-effect
linkage in our brains. That smell to the presence of a tiger. That smell might
be scientifically linked to the tiger, it might not. But from the standpoint of
natural selection, it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is by
comparing two people. One that has the cause-effect link, and one that
doesn't. The only thing that matters is whether that cause-effect link will
help the person who has it in their brain have more kids. Suppose that that
cause-effect link made the one caveman run away every single time he
smells that. And suppose we have another caveman who doesn't have that
link. Suppose that in real science terms, that smell was associated with a
tiger 10% of the time. If the caveman with that cause-effect link runs away
every single time, that one time out of ten where there really is a tiger will
make all the difference. If you compare a hundred cavemen with that cause-
effect link to a hundred cavemen without that cause-effect link, over the
long slow course of evolution, those that have that cause-effect link will
tend to slowly out-populate those without it. This, of course, is a very
oversimplified explanation, but plenty of studies indicate that we humans
assume causal links when none exist. In one study, they placed six-month-
old babies in front of a computer screen. On the computer screen they had
two blips that were created by two completely independent programs.
Judging by the babies’ facial expressions, they concluded that the baby
assumed the two blips were connected somehow. When they both stopped,
the baby seemed OK. When they both kept moving, the baby seemed OK.
But when one stopped, and the other didn't, the poor kid freaked out like the
universe had broken. But when the two were moving again (or both stopped
again) it was like the universe had been fixed.

Skeptics Best Friend

The most useful go-to response when any of us hear something we don't
like is, "Do you have any proof?" or something similar. This is because we
inherently know that not much really can be proved. Even to prove
something simple like A causes B, you have to do tons of research. You
have to show that every single time A happens, B happens. You have to
show that B only happens after A happens. And just showing this isn't
enough. You need to have some kind of theory about why A causes B. In
the harsh world of science, this is not nearly as easy as most people think.
Turns out that Socrates is more correct than people, especially those in
power, believe. Which is probably why they killed him. Our world is based
much more on might-makes-right than on the deductive logic of Spock.
That can lead to some endless philosophical discussions, but for our
purposes, any attack of any causal ideas within any insults will be
essentially impossible to withstand. So far, we've learned some simple
questions to throw out, which will demonstrate that the insulter doesn't have
much behind any insults. But now we're going to get down and dirty with
some vicious responses.

Ninja Defensive Strategy

In the last chapter, you learned to train yourself to look for simple labels.
Your pants are lame. This idea is stupid. This meeting is a waste of time.
This party sucks. Simple labels are easy to destroy. But now we can look a
little deeper and start to see any kind of causal links. This will require a bit
more thought and a lot more practice, but delivered correctly, they can be
devastating. You'll have to be sneaky. If they give you a label, you can ask
why they think that. Then once they give you a reason, that will be your
foothold into their destruction. Before, we asked simple questions that we
knew didn't have any answers. But now, with an understanding of the
cause-effect generator that lives in our brains, we can ask leading questions
that will expose the ridiculousness of these cause-effect links. Understand
that each person is different, and each person has a whole collection of
cause-effect links in their brain. From here on out this will be much more
like martial arts, where everything you say will be highly dependent on
what they say. We will go over some useful drills and practice techniques,
that will make it easy to increase your skills over time.

This party is lame.

(A is B)

What do you mean?

There are no girls here.

(A is B because of C; C causes A to be B)

Why does not having girls make the party lame?

As soon as you ask this question, they will be very unsure how to proceed.
They will either give up, or they'll have to come up with a very rigid idea to
maintain their idea that the party is lame. This technique, when used with
friends, can be helpful in eliciting honest complaints that can be fixed if
desired. Or they can simply shut up the insulter if the situation is more
confrontational.

This meeting is a waste of time.

What do you mean?

I've got other things to do.

(The implied cause-effect is they shouldn't be at this meeting because they

have more important things to do)

So why does having other things to do make this meeting a waste of time?

Instead of trying to understand and address their intentions, you just stay on
the surface and address the things they've said. You've essentially flipped it
back and put the onus on them to explain why what they have to do is more
important than the subject of the meeting. When it is first stated, this
meeting being a waste of time sounds like it's related to having other things
to do. But in reality, the two really have no logical connection. The meeting
could be critically important, or it could be absolutely meaningless.
However, without giving any attention to the assumed casual links we all
carry around in our heads (most of which are really illogical and not
causally linked), we tend to take them at face value. Most of the time, you'll
find that simply asking why something is casually linked to something else
will be enough to vaporize any negative energy.

Post Journaling Practice

Training yourself to respond from a curiosity standpoint is fairly simple.

You only need a couple of the questions we've gone over. It may, however,
take longer to train yourself to ask what they mean, and see the cause effect
connections in their response. While we operate from a cause-effect
standpoint, we rarely speak in clear cause-effect terms. In the last chapter,
for example, we looked at a complaint that the meeting was a waste of time.
After asking why we imagined the responder said they'd had other things to
do. It's not altogether obvious that they think that one is the cause and one if
the effect.
You will not likely ever hear of a response like this:

This meeting is a waste of time.

Why do you think that?

I think that this meeting is a waste of time because I've got more important
things to do. And when I think about doing those other things, compared to
the value I'm likely to get out of this meeting, I can only conclude that the
best choice of my time is doing those other things rather than sitting in this
meeting. That is why I think this meeting is a waste of time.

You are more likely to hear responses like this:

This meeting is a waste of time.

Why do you think that?

Our boss is an idiot.

or

Because it is!

or

Duh!

As soon as we slide in to the realm of interactive defense, rather than

throwing a couple ready-made linguistic blocks (why do you think that?),
we'll need a lot of practice. Just like martial arts, you can only improve so
much on inorganic equipment. To develop real world fighting skills, you
need to spar with real world people, so you can practice responding in the
moment to how people respond to you in the moment. Not only will you
need to use these skills on different people, but the same people will
respond differently based on different situations and different moods.
Luckily, when practicing linguistic defensive skills, you don't need to
practice in real time like you do in the gym. You can take whatever they
said and practice responding to that after the fact. This is impossible in the
physical realm.

Step One

The first step is to just practice asking for more information. Ask simple
questions like "Why do you think that?" Or simply, "What do you mean?"
and simply remember what they said. Most of the time simply asking that
question, "What do you mean" will do a lot to diffuse their insult energy.
But whatever reply they give you, so long as it's verbal, remember it, and
write it down.

Step Two

Once you write it down, try to create as many cause-effect statements as

you can. For example, if they walk into the elevator, and say:

Those pants are lame!

To which you may reply:

What it is it about my pants that makes them lame?

And they reply:

Just look at them!

At this point, you may feel too off balance to come up with anything. That's
perfectly fine. Just remember what they said so you can write it down later.
When you train for a boxing match, you need to train the movements into
your muscle memory. But when figuring out how train in better verbal
responses, you need to train them into your brain memory. You can train
your brain memory later, so long as you remember what was said. So now
you are safely at home, feeling calmer and more creative, and you can get
to work. You have this to work with:

Your pants are lame!

because

Look at them!

Now you can take some time to guess any cause-effect linkages that you
can. You don't need to guess correctly, because when asked for clarification,
your attacker said, "Look at them!" This is meaningless because they
literally couldn't think of an objective reason. The first level of interactive
defense is to take whatever cause-effect they throw out, take it at face value,
and continue to ask them to explain it. This will take time and practice
because it is very difficult to think clearly when you are unexpectedly
insulted, even playfully, even by friends, in front of others. The goal is to
think clearly and keep asking for more clarification on any cause-effect
reasons they have behind the insult. With only a few simple and calm
questions designed to get more clarification, their reasons will soon look
silly and foolish. But that won't happen until you take the time to post-
game-journal as many insults as possible. Ones you hear, either directed at
you or directed at others, ones on TV, and most importantly, the ones you
fear the most. The point of this guide is not to give you a list of ready-made
comebacks. That would be as useless as trying to prepare for a boxing
match against an unknown opponent by reading a book on boxing
strategies. The best defensive linguistic moves will come from your own
brain. And you must put them there yourself by taking the time to write out
as many cause-effect linkages you can. Building up your own robust set of
comebacks, as well as the calm demeanor to deliver them with deadly effect
will take time. What follows is an example of how one might respond or
journal to the above statements.

Your pants are lame because look at them.

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because you can see them?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because you are looking at them?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because they are visible?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because they are not invisible?

Practice with Friends

As with many of these techniques, what can be used as a quick and deadly
defense against genuine insults can be used playfully and positively with
friends. With friends, you'll most likely be more relaxed, so you can
playfully expand the implied cause-effect, take them to extreme and
hysterical levels. That same insult (your pants are lame) can be devastating
when coming from the office bully in front of some strangers in an elevator.
But that exact same insult, when coming from a friend, can be a seed for a
long, friendly, and enjoyable competition. All these linguistic patterns can
and should be practiced as much as possible with friends. Even if you
receive an insult from an enemy, a great way to practice would be to later
imagine that the same insult came from a friend. This will put in you in a
more resourceful state of mind. In that state of mind, you might extend the
cause-effect assumptions as follows:

Your pants are lame!

Because, dude, look at them!

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because you can see them? If I
poked your eyes out would they stop being lame?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because you are looking at them?
Were they not lame until you showed up and could see them? Why would
you make my pants turn lame like that? How long have you had that
superpower?
What do you mean? Are my pants lame because they are visible? So, you're
saying if my pants were invisible, and everybody could see my junk, that
would be less lame? Are you some kind of a secret nudist or something? Is
this your way of asking me to take my pants off? Dude, really?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because they are not invisible?
Would you like me to take them off? Is that what you're saying? Are you
saying you want to see my junk?

Sun Tzu

Socrates unfortunately taught us if you ask too many unanswerable

questions to the wrong people, they'll make you drink hemlock. Sun Tzu
gives some other advice. The ancient Chinese General, among many of his
military strategies, gives this advice:

The best way to conquer an enemy is make him a friend.

While you don't actually have to make friends with those who would do you
harm, it is a good strategy to at least pretend to be friendly. If you can take
any verbal insult, and flip around so confidently it turns into a playful joke
on your attacker, you will earn a lot more status. It's one thing to hear and
insult, slam your enemy and walk away triumphant. But it's a completely
different level of skill to hear a vicious insult, and leave everybody
laughing, including the insulter. This level of Teflon defense will make you
very popular.
Fighting Fire with Fire

Last chapter we tiptoed into taking any assumed cause-effect statement and
playfully flipping it around. Essentially, we took one side of their cause-
effect statement (your pants are lame because look at them) and took it at
face value. Look at them means they can see them. So, we played around
with goofy ideas that connect a subjective label of your pants (lame) and a
descriptive physical fact, namely that they are looking at them. We saw how
taking a simple assumption to a silly extension is easy, even though it will
take practice to be able to deliver these in real time. But sometimes they
will deliver some cause-effect statements without our needing to ask. And if
this happens, you can train yourself to deliver and equal and opposite cause-
effect statement that essentially obliterates theirs. This is dangerous,
because it's shifting directly into confrontation. When you ask for more
information, and then playfully reframe their cause-effect statement, this is
a party skill just as much as it is a defensive technique. But sometimes
you're in no mood for playful reframes. Sometimes you want to send the
insulter a message, as well as anybody else who is listening. Sometimes and
insult is a playful ribbing. But sometimes it really is a pecking order
contest. The person giving the insult is purposely trying to knock you down
on the social status ladder. If they are doing so because they are unsure of
their own status, a playful reframe may make them even more worried, and
more vicious over time. Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire. We can
use a prison movie metaphor to illustrate this. If you are the new guy, trying
to be everybody's friend is the last thing you want. Since your personal
safety is at stake, and if keeping to yourself is not an option, you must
establish yourself as high up on the social status ladder as you can. If you
feel this way when getting hit with any unexpected insults, fast and vicious
is often a much better option than playful and interactive. In that case, the
same insult can be met, using the same logic, but with completely different
energy.

Dude, those pants are lame!

Because you're standing there wishing I was naked.

If you said this with neutral energy, but zero playfulness, the insulter would
get the message. Especially if the response came quickly and with deadpan
seriousness. Other people in the elevator would immediately turn their
attention onto the insulter, which is likely the last thing they wanted.
However, this is dangerous. If you are weak at all, they will sense that and
come at you with another attack. This is why responding this way is
dangerous if you aren't completely confident. A lack of confidence can
easily be overcome with a feigned brain-fade curiosity. But a deadpan
seriousness can only be delivered with a lot of congruence. But there is a
benefit of developing the ability to deliver quick reframes with deadpan
seriousness. The actual logic doesn't have to be accurate. The words don't
have to be accurate. They only need to sound in the same ballpark as the
insult. The driving force will be your deadpan seriousness, something they
have not expected. However, depending on who they are (you should never
give a deadpan response to a stranger unless you're ready to rumble) you
could go back and forth a few times. This is why it's a good idea to develop
a rich resource of verbal comebacks before you get to the level of the
deadpan reframe comeback. If you are at all in doubt, always use the brain-
fade curiosity response.

Your pants are lame.

What do you mean?

Look at them!

They're lame because you can see them? I don't understand...

Post Journaling Is Your Best Friend

This will take a long time to build in your brain. You'll need to hear the
insult, ascertain the cause-effect within the insult, come up with a quick
reframe for that cause-effect, and then deliver that cause-effect deadpan not
only with complete congruency, but within a second or less. The sooner the
better. Every nanosecond that ticks off the clock is time against you. This
will take just as long as training to duck a punch and return a deadly punch
in as quick a time frame. That takes time and practice. Hearing an
unexpected insult and delivering a deadly reframe also takes time and
practice. Thinking about it after the fact will not be sufficient. You'll need to
write down the insult. Write down as many imagined cause-effect
statements within the insult as possible. Write down any expansions to the
cause-effect. Write down any conclusions to the cause-effect. Write down
the few most insulting conclusions to the cause-effect. Then practice
hearing the insult and saying the cause-effect. This sounds tedious, and it is.
Just as tedious spending hours in the gym every day. But that one time you
avoid getting sucker punched in the face will be worth it. These linguistic
skills will get you far more than just avoiding insults. They will make your
brain much quicker. You will become much more of an enjoyable
conversationalist. Training how to fight at the local gym is something
millions of people with zero plans of ever getting into an actual fight do.
They do it for the secondary benefits. The health benefits. The confidence
and self-esteem benefits. Even if you never feel like returning fire with fire,
practicing as if you could, if you needed to, will have plenty of secondary
benefits. All of which will enhance your career and your social life.

Strategy

Step One

Write out the insult in cause-effect form.

Your pants are lame because look at them.

Step Two

Write out all the goofy ways you can extend the cause-effect idea.

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because you can see them?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because you are looking at them?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because they are visible?

What do you mean? Are my pants lame because they are not invisible?
Step Three

Extend all the goofy ideas to insulting ideas about the attacker.

You want to see me naked.

You want me out of these pants.

Step Four

Turn these into a simple question to your attacker.

Do you want to see me naked?

Do you want to see me out of these pants?

Step Five

Practice delivering these questions with deadpan delivery.

Step Six

Imagine they respond to your deadpan delivery with the worst possible
reply imaginable. Then go through the same process.

Practice with Friends

As always, practice these techniques playfully with friends. This will allow
you to practice in real time to several layers deep. They'll insult you, you
will reframe them, they'll reframe that reframe, and so on. Recognize that
one of the ways we humans (and other primates) practice these fighting
techniques with friends is the same reason we are recommending it here.
The more you practice play fighting with friends, the better you'll be able to
fight when you really need to. This idea is not only programmed into our
human DNA, but in most other social mammals as well.
Cause Effect Killers

As luck would have it, there is a systematic way to carefully go through and
reframe any cause effect statement. Language is not quite like math in that
we can start with an equation and solve for X. But so long as the cause-
effect statements are simple enough, we can systematically go through and
take them apart. Understand these are starting points to help you build a
huge collection of potential responses in your brain, and more importantly
the congruence and emotional fortitude to deliver them. These are very
much like specific blocks against specific punches. Learning and practicing
them a couple of times won't do much good. The real results will come
from daily practice on the actual cause-effect based statements and insults
in the real world. Also, understand these reframes are best used as
intermediary tools to help come up with a final statement that you feel
comfortable using. Your friends and enemies will only hear that final
statement. Think of these reframes of intermediary starting points to help
you get to that final statement. That being said, what follows are some of
the most powerful linguistic reframes. We will apply them to the statement
about a meeting being stupid because they have something better to do.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Understand all the examples are only starting points. These are to help you
start the process of brainstorming different ways to reply to insults. These
are not designed to be fully prepared comeback statements any more than
reading about a defensive physical move will give you anything other than
a starting point from which to practice. Also understand that not all of these
reframes will work in all situations. You will likely have your own go-to
favorites, and those will be the ones you can build your linguistic defensive
skills on.

Pattern One - Meta Frame

This is when you look at a very big picture and see the argument from a
different perspective.
This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

In the big scheme of things, the company's bottom line is the most important
thing.

Pattern Two - Change Frame Size

This is you look at a different perspective, but not as big as before.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Yeah, but we all got to be here till five no matter what.

Pattern Three - Apply to Self; A to A

This is when you take one side of the argument and apply it to itself.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

This meeting thinks that complaint is stupid.

Pattern Four - Apply to Self; B to B

Same as the above but applied to the other side.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Well, unfortunately for us this meeting has nothing better to do that keep us
here.

Pattern Five - Reality Strategy

This is when you question the actual reality of the statement.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

How do you know it's better until the meeting is over?

Pattern Six - Model of The World

This attacks the belief as only being one opinion out of several.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Well, our shareholders who depend on our profitability would disagree.

Pattern Seven - Intent

This is when you attack the intention beneath the statement. Why they are
saying that.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

You're only saying that because you are hungover, and you don't want
anybody to know.

Pattern Eight - Redefine - A not equal to B

This is when you agree with one half but link it to something else.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

No, this meeting is stupid because we have to listen to you complain.

Pattern Nine - Redefine - B not equal to A

Same as above, but to the other side.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

You'll have plenty better to do once you get fired for missing too many
meetings.

Pattern Ten - Counter Example

Find any example that disproves the belief or statement.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Have you ever skipped a meeting and later wish you didn't?

Pattern Eleven - Chunk Up

This is when you take either side of the belief (rather than the whole belief)
and make it bigger.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

It won't seem stupid this weekend when you've already forgotten about it.

That thing you think is better won't seem so important in a week.

Pattern Twelve - Chunk Down

Same as above but go down in size instead of up.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

What exactly do you think is stupid about this meeting?

Why exactly do you think what you have planned is so important?

Thirteen - Metaphor

Take any reframe and put it into a metaphor or anecdote.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

I'll bet unemployed people wish they had unimportant meetings to attend.

Fourteen - Another Outcome

Take the cause-effect statement and make it irrelevant by placing it within a
larger context.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Probably, but either way we need to discuss some things.

Fifteen - Consequences

Explain what will happen if their belief is taken to its logical conclusion.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Keep skipping meetings and you'll never get that promotion.

Sixteen - Hierarchy of Criteria

Use an example of something more important that makes the statement

irrelevant.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

That's how a job works. They pay you to do things you wouldn't do
otherwise.

Seventeen - Take It to The Threshold

Take it to an extreme extension. To silly levels.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

Maybe you should never go to another meeting again. Ever. For any
reason. Even something like a court date or your daughter's wedding. Since
you've got so much important stuff to do.

Eighteen - Reverse Presuppositions

Flip the belief around and see if it sounds better.

This meeting is stupid because I have something better to do.

How can what you have to do be much less important than this meeting?

How can this meeting turn out to be way more important than that other
stuff?

Build to Level of Unconscious Competence

Most are tempted to take a few of their most feared instincts, and glance at
lists like these and come up with a couple of ready responses. That can
work. But the real power of these comes in training your mind to think in
these terms to the point of unconscious competence. Where you can hear
any statement that sounds like a cause-effect statement and think of several
ways to destroy it with any of these patterns and the ideas they will lead to.
Getting to this level will take time. In fact, we strongly suggest that you
consider the idea of daily training with these patterns. Daily training to be
treated like exercise. Drills you do every day, for the rest of your life.
Physical health is important. People spend billions of dollars a year on
exercise and diet. Consider your mental skills just as important. These will
make you seem much more intelligent, much more articulate, much more
enjoyably socially, and will literally raise you up significantly on any social
status hierarchy. If practiced consistently, these will take you far beyond
being able to defend yourself verbally.
How to Practice

We'll repeat the same idea several times, so it will eventually sink in. The
magic from these patterns doesn't come from their linguistic structures. The
magic will come from how you take these linguistic structures and use them
as a starting point to create your own custom-built responses to the types of
ideas and statements you hear. Think of these as linguistic versions of most
basic martial arts movements. Direct hits, roundhouse kicks, jabs, forearm
blocks, feints, etc. It's up to you as the martial artist to practice those using
your own mind body system until they are programmed deeply into your
muscle memory at the level of unconscious competence. How you respond
to attacks after that will be based on the context; the size and movement and
skill level of your attacker, your own state of mind (angry, happy, busy,
eagerly looking for action, etc.), and plenty of other variables. When
thinking in terms of physical defense, it goes without saying that it will take
plenty of time. We urge you to consider taking just as much time (which for
serious enthusiasts of martial arts is a daily and permanent habit) as the
physical arts. The way you use these is basic is structure, but in real life and
real time will have endless permutations.

Basic Structure

Let's say you hear an insult, that is not in cause-effect form. This is the
common case. People will look at you and say, "Wow, those pants are
lame," which is really a label of an object. But we can treat it directly. The
patterns from the last chapter were all assumed to be A causes B. But we
can use those lame patterns to treat A is B. Since the above statement, (your
pants are lame) is in that structure, you can either use it as is, your pants =
lame, or you can outframe and assume another part that isn't there. Because
I can see your pants, I have determined that they are lame.

Schoolyard Tactics

You can apply any of the patterns directly. My pants aren't lame, you are
lame. This is what school kids and politicians do. It's easy, but it's also very
easy to attack. Suppose this was somebody that you didn't want to have a
back and forth with. And let's suppose this was somebody that you dealt
with regularly, and didn't see as a potential enemy, so you weren't worried
about them secretly planning to ruin your career. So, you decided to fling
back a comeback that would keep them quiet until you got off the elevator.
This would serve its purpose. The others in the elevator would be impressed
with your linguistic defense skills. The insulter would be shut down, but
only temporarily, and not enough to hold a grudge. So, your instinctive
(based on a lot of training) would be:

Wow, those pants are lame!

I'm sorry (said deadpan while looking up at the elevator numbers). Were
you hoping to see me naked?

Statement

Your pants are lame. I know this because I can see them.

Assumed Cause Effect

Your pants are lame because I can see them.

Reframe

Seeing my pants is lame. Seeing something different is therefore preferable.

The only option is to remove the pants and remove the problem. The
assumption is that the intention of the statement is to get you to remove your
pants. You assume the intention and respond plainly to the intention.

On the other hand, if the insulter is a friend, one who you routinely trade
barbs with, and you've determined the others in the elevator are not the type
who would run to HR and report any offensive language (you know this
from personal experience) a completely different response might be
appropriate.

Wow, those pants are lame!

Yeah? (said seductively while turning and facing the attacker), wait till you
see my underwear!

This is basically the same logic as above, that the attacker’s intention is
they'd rather see you out of your pants rather than in them, only instead of a
deadpan comeback, you fully embrace the frame. This is kind of like an
insult, in that you are fighting fire with fire. The deadpan response is to put
them on the spot, and force them to explain that's not the intention, which
would get them to shut up. The second one is more in line with a playful
insult fight. Only instead of fighting fire with fire, you use the common
friendly insult-fight technique of agree and amplify. Use their statement,
find whatever goofy assumptions you can find within it, and blow it up to
silly proportions (which is one of the patterns).

That's A Lot of Thinking!

Yes, and there is no way you could pull any of this off with only an
intellectual understanding of these patterns. This is why you need to
practice them daily, by writing them out. Write out statements you hear and
write out all the different ways you could reframe them based on different
contexts, different time frames, different enemies, and different observers.
This is where it gets much more complicated than martial arts. Martial arts
are fairly simple from a structural standpoint. Going back and forth and
thinking in terms of underlying energy, surface level verbal structures is
very difficult. But this is also something where there is really no upper limit
to the level of skill you can obtain, and the benefits these different levels of
skill will bring. For example, imagine our second scenario, where you
expanded and agreed with the pants insult, by turning and embracing the
assumption that your attacker wanted to see you naked. To do this in front
of others takes a lot of confidence and poise. Unless the observers in the
elevator have serious mental hangups, they would likely find it very
assuming. It would give them a quick and unexpected burst of interpersonal
social pleasure, one that would get their mood elevated (get it?) for a while.
Next time they saw you, they would remember you based on that event.
Being able to think quickly in the moment and respond quickly and
articulately is a very rare skill. This is a skill that many people think is
genetic or inborn. But now you have a specific set of tools to practice this
very skill. These reframes, and their accompanying energy won't be there
unless you build the neurological foundation.

Post-Game Journal

A great way to get started is when you hear a statement like the pants one,
but you can't quite think of something in the moment. That's a perfect
opportunity. Wait until later, write down the statement you heard (even if it
wasn't directed at you) and reframe it as many ways as you can. Reframe it
into a vicious comeback. Reframe it into a playfully sexy comeback.
Reframe it into a mind freezing deadpan comeback. Come with a bunch of
different reframes, and practice saying them. If you do this around friends
and office workers, you'll find that people tend to have a few "go-to" insults
and put downs. They might not be linguistically identical, but you'll find
their structure is very common. Once you identify their particular structure,
coming up with reframes will get easier and easier. And eventually you'll be
in a position to let loose a zinger. Whether you choose to or not is up to you.
But you'll find that having a ready-response in mind will do wonders for
your confidence and increase the power of your subconscious
communication.
Deeper Than You Imagine

You may have purchased this guide to deal with one or two problematic
people. Or perhaps you might have thought this would be a guide of
patterns you could memorize and use as snappy comebacks, either at parties
or against actual insults. Hopefully, by now, you are starting to think that
maybe you've stumbled onto something that is much more powerful. If you
are, you are absolutely correct. It turns out most, if not all, of our thoughts
can be easily categorized into the two areas, A is B or A causes be. And
with a little creativity, we can even use those same eighteen reframes on
subject-predicate statements. For example, consider this simple sentence:

John likes Mary.

There's no causal link, and it's certainly not saying that John is Mary. But
that same sentence can also be put through all those patterns.

Pattern One - Meta Frame

Everybody likes somebody.

Pattern Two - Change Frame Size

What specifically does he like about her?

Pattern Three - Apply to Self; A to A

John likes a lot of people.

Pattern Four - Apply to Self; B to B

Mary doesn't like you telling me this.

Pattern Five - Reality Strategy

How do you know?

Pattern Six - Model of The World

Unrequited love is the oldest story in the book.

Pattern Seven - Intent

You're only telling me that because you like idle gossip.

Pattern Eight - Redefine - A not equal to B

He doesn't like Mary. He likes what he's heard about Mary.

Pattern Nine - Redefine - B not equal to A

John doesn't like Mary. I think you like Mary.

Pattern Ten - Counter Example

He didn't seem to like her the other night when he was with Lisa.

Pattern Eleven - Chunk Up

For how long?

Pattern Twelve - Chunk Down

Is that who he likes this week?

Thirteen - Metaphor

Everybody likes somebody.

Fourteen - Another Outcome

Yeah, but he should focus on his homework or he'll get kicked out of school
and then nobody will like him.
Fifteen - Consequences

Yeah, I'll bet Mary's boyfriend won't be happy to hear that.

Sixteen - Hierarchy of Criteria

Yeah, maybe now, but isn't she shipping out overseas tomorrow?

Seventeen - Take It to The Threshold

So, they going to get married? Like tomorrow?

Eighteen - Reverse Presuppositions

How can the more he chases her the less he'll like her?

Obviously, some of these fit better than others. But as you can see, you can
take any statement (which represents any thought) and run it through the
ringer. Then you can take a couple of these, and based on your ultimate
intention, come to a few surface level responses that are appropriate for the
situation.

Thought Obliteration Patterns

This means you can take any verbalized thought and potentially destroy it
with enough practice. Why would you want to destroy somebody's
thoughts? Many of us have no shortage of negative or limiting thoughts.
Imagine being the guy or gal who takes a randomly tossed out worry by a
close friend and easily destroys it, thereby building their confidence. Most
people have this intention. But the most we can muster is something
unhelpful like:

You shouldn't say that!

Don't be negative!
C'mon, I know you better than that!

Imagine, on the other hand, that your close friend is contemplating some
action, an action you know (from being a more objective observer) that they
have a high probability of success. But inside their own brain, hamstrung by
subjective worry and anxiety, they might be ready to throw in the towel. So,
they toss out a statement like:

I dunno, I never do well in these situations...

But having trained in the arts of ninja verbal defense, you can quickly reply
like this:

Yeah? You know who doesn't do well in these situations is that old guy we
had in PE class in third grade. That guy always showed up with pee stains
on his pants, poor guy, felt sorry for him. That guy couldn't even pee right.
But he showed up every day, pee stains and all. You know you what you also
never do? You never let me date your sister for which I'll always hate you
for. Let's make a deal, if you give up this opportunity, you also have to give
up your stay-away-from-my-sister rule, deal? I get a crack at your sister? I
mean, she's gonna reject me anyway, but getting rejected is half the fun. At
least I can die happy, knowing I tried. You know who didn't die happy? That
frog that you ran over last week. I'll bet he had an opportunity just like this
one, and then you killed him. I think you owe it to that poor frog to carry his
torch, get on over there and get this done. Unless, of course, if you're some
kind of sociopath. But if you are a sociopath, you shouldn't be feeling any
fear right now to begin with. Huh.

Yes, that is a very long response. But it will do a lot more for your friend
than any one of the most common statements we tend to use with good
intentions but weak results. You'll also notice that in that above on-the-spot
monologue, you'll find plenty of chains of these reframes. This is another
skill that you'll develop once you start writing these out every day. All it
takes is one reframe of any kind to get started. Since you will have trained
those eighteen reframe structures into your brain, you can easily go on and
on from one reframe. This means with enough practice, you'll only need to
hear one comment, of any form (insult, complaint, idle wish, statement,
etc.), and reply with an unstoppable flow of reframes. If you're helping a
buddy, it will cheer them up and motivate them. But if it's a real enemy, and
you really feel it? It will be a non-stop violent verbal attack that will send
them running for cover.

Deep Thought Training

The language we use is a representation of our thoughts. You will find that
any simple statement can be obliterated with these patterns, either over time
on your own, or in the moment after enough training. This means that any
vocalized thought you hear can be destroyed. This goes much further than
what Socrates discovered. Socrates essentially teased out other people's
ideas and assumptions. Then through the careful art of asking the right
questions in the right order, he essentially showed this would lead to a
contradiction. He would ask simple questions about a logical idea. He
would ask more questions surrounding that logical idea until he had enough
information, all coming out of the other person's brain, to contradict the
original idea. Let's never forget how dangerous this is, since this led directly
to Socrates being forced to drink hemlock. The reason was he was
corrupting the youth. But his whole game was based on his stated belief that
he didn't know anything, nor did anybody else. So, he wasn't corrupting the
youth with any specific ideas, since he believed there weren't any ideas. He
was corrupting the youth with strategies that would destroy the ideas of
others. People that have any kind of power don't really like that idea. If it is
true, that nothing is really objectively true, then the only reason for anybody
to have any power is because they have the wherewithal to enforce their
power by violence if necessary. This meant that for Socrates, just asking the
right questions in the right order to the wrong people ended up getting him
killed. You can develop that ability, and then some. By slowly training your
brain to think in terms of all these reframes, and to think a few levels deep,
you can learn, over time, to easily obliterate any idea you hear that you
don't like, for any reason. This may make you a lot of enemies. This may
make people want to kill you, just like the leaders of Ancient Greece
decided to kill Socrates. But once you flex this power even lightly, even a
few times, nobody in their right mind will ever insult you again.
Swiss Army Brain

Some people study martial arts because it's a great way to get in shape.
Some people study martial arts because of the increases in self-confidence.
Some people enjoy competing in tournaments. Some people are stone cold
psychopaths and want to become serial killers but don't want to use tools or
leave evidence. Some people study martial arts because the dojo is always
filled with cute girls. And some study martial arts because they want to stop
getting picked on. For the art of the verbal defense, there are many areas of
application that you may not have considered.

Helping Friends

You can defend your friends against getting insulted just like you can
defend yourself. Even somebody who's not yet your friend. You may be
hanging out in a social setting, see somebody receive an unanticipated
verbal smack down, and feel like flexing your brain. This can be the
equivalent of, "Hey, big man. Why not pick on somebody your own size?"
How you deliver this is up to you. But so long as you have the mental skills
built in, you can entertain the whole crowd with a stream insults, either
playful, or vicious. You can even apologize for getting in the middle of
something by making it clear to everybody that the original insultee was
fine on their own and help them save face.

Sorry, I didn't mean to butt in like that, but something about that guy got to
me.

Deeper Friend Helping

It's straightforward to see a stranger getting insulted, and then destroy the
insulter. But it's also possible to be much more covert. Somebody might be
getting a put down, but instead of destroying the attacker, you can take
whatever they are saying about the receiver and flip it around to make it a
positive statement about the receiver. This may sound a little strange, but
once you build in the ability to take any statement and flip it around to
mean whatever you like, you can put that ultimate meaning on whomever
you like. This will take plenty of practice, but it is truly wizard level, in the
moment, meaning reframes. Once you really get it, that Socrates was indeed
correct, that unless we are talking about physics, all our thoughts really are
opinions, you'll start to see them for how malleable they really are. The
things we say represent thoughts we really haven't, uh, thought about very
much. So not only will people be unable to defend their thoughts (if you
keep asking basic meta-model type questions) but they won't be able to
defend against any reframes you throw out. What makes this even more
mysterious and metaphysical is very few people (except philosophers and
habitual dope smokers) tend to even think about this stuff. We aren't exactly
thinking about it, we are learning very specific, very strategic skills to take
apart any thoughts you hear spoken out loud. This is something few people
even think of as possible, let alone something that they even think about
doing. So, when you hear somebody putting somebody else down, and you
take that put down, and flip it around into somebody positive about the
victim, they'll look at you like a brilliant mind wizard. Granted, this will
take a lot of practice, both at home and out in the field, but it is a very
worthy long-term goal to strive for. And it is all within your reach, so long
as you're willing to put in the work.

Lesser Wizardry

A much more easily applicable place to flex your brain is playfully. If you
practice these patterns just a little bit, you'll see this is the exact structure of
standup comedians who make millions per year. The structure is very
simple in reality. They start of talking about a normal situation. Then they
reframe that normal situation, either the situation itself or something
somebody said, to a goofy reframe. Then they usually act out that goofy
reframe using some performance skills. The entire standup routine is
essentially that simple structure played out repeatedly over an hour or two.
You can do this, to a much lesser extent and with immediate results at any
party or social situation. Take anything anybody says as a starting point and
reframe it a couple times to silly levels and enjoy yourself. Depending on
how extroverted you feel like being, you can use the comedian's trick of
acting out any of the reframes in any way you feel like. You can start small
with your close friends in safe situations and expand whenever you are
ready.
Expand and Destroy

One clever way to use these is with some meta model work. You may have
a friend who is in a bad mood, but they don't feel like talking. Ask a few
easy to answer meta model questions, about anything, so long as they are
not invasive questions. Once you get a few ideas out of their brain and into
the open, you can playfully obliterate them and improve their mood.

Become a Pig to Eat the Tiger

This is a technique from Sun Tzu. It means acting like you are defenseless,
tricking your enemy to get close to you, and then destroying them. You can
do this with some brain-fade curiosity based meta model questions, and
then obliterate the answers with any reframes. Instead of using Socrates'
idea of pulling out enough information so they contradict their own ideas,
you can pull out just enough to destroy them. So long as you stay in your
brain-fade-curiosity mindset (being the pig) you wait patiently until you
have enough to work with. Then you can lower the boom with a few vicious
reframes. Even better is if you slowly shift from your brain-fade-curiosity
mode to the deadpan delivery mode. This can be one of those situations
where the energy subtly shifts, but in a very clear way. Everybody in the
room knows something just happened, but nobody's quite sure what. There
you were, being a hopeless pig about to get slaughtered, but then you just
leapt up across the table and ate your enemy. Since nobody really likes to
watch a victim get destroyed, they were all pretending to be busy staring at
the suddenly interesting tabletop when the switch happened. They'll notice
your attacker is suddenly ripped to shreds, intestines hanging all over the
place, and there you are with a wicked smile and their entrails dripping
from the corners of your mouth. This is when people say, "Uh, what just
happened?" Of course, we are being metaphorical. You should never eat
anybody. But you can imagine that if you were to metaphorically eat
somebody, you could certainly have a lot of fun playing with your food
before wolfing it down unexpectedly.

Pig Tiger Party Skill

This same technique is also a very powerful style of comedy. To be slowly
setting up a joke with pure deadpan, and then delivering the unexpected
punchline that sets audiences to tears. The structure is the same. Use some
brain-fade-curiosity meta model to ease out some raw material from your
party-pals' brains, and then fling back a silly and unexpected reframe, all
the while shifting ever so subtly from the brain-fade-curious to deadpan
delivery. For bonus points, wait until your victims are taking a sip from
their drinks when you deliver the goods. Not only will they laugh, but
they'll spit their drinks all over the place. With a little practice, you can
build quite a reputation for yourself!
Negative Belief Destruction

As luck would have it (or perhaps the entity who designed the structure of
our brains and our thoughts) these same patterns are not only helpful in
being a party hero, destroying insults, and helping strangers and friends
alike, they can demolish your own beliefs. Beliefs are of the same
grammatical structure as insults and other ideas we've been obliterating. But
we don't want to destroy just any random belief, that would be dangerous.
That would be like walking around your house and haphazardly swinging a
sledgehammer at your walls. If you accidentally hit a load bearing beam
you'd be in big trouble! We can think of beliefs metaphorically the same
way. We have some central, main supporting beliefs that make up who we
are. We have whole bunch of supporting beliefs that support our core
beliefs. Knocking these out would be foolish. But we also have a ton of
limiting beliefs. Beliefs that keep us from going after what we want.
Unfortunately, these beliefs actually believe (yes, we've anthropomorphized
our beliefs, so they can have beliefs of their own) they are protecting us.
This is based on how we evolved. Essentially, way back in the day of early
human evolution, our brains were getting really big, really quickly. So, to
maintain our big brains, which are essential to our survival, we were born
much less finished. Compared to other social mammas, even other primates,
we spend way more time in adolescence than everybody else. Our brains
are still growing for a long time before we are fully functioning adults.
Unfortunately, one of the side effects of this is our brains wire in some
things that are true, and are helpful when we are young, but they stay there
and keep us from reaching our full potential as we get older. Unfortunately,
there's no quick way to get rid of all these limiting beliefs. Each one of us
has a very different experience growing up, so each one of us has a
completely unique set of limiting beliefs. There is no "one size fits all"
belief killing technique. There is, however, a very flexible strategy that you
can use to go through and obliterate these beliefs one at a time. And
eventually, you'll hit a big one and with that big one a whole bunch of little
ones will collapse. How do you find these beliefs? You must go looking for
them. How do you look for them? You must find evidence of their
existence. One key piece of evidence is that you want something, but not
only do you not have it, but you don't really have any idea how to get it. It
must be something that feels out of reach, but critically, it must be
associated with a feeling of "not deserving." Some things we don't have, but
we sort of know how to get them, we're just too lazy. But other things, we
really feel a deep sense of anxiety, as if we don't really deserve it. This is
where self-sabotage comes from. We start to get something really good. But
a deeper part of us feels like we are doing something we shouldn’t be doing.
As if some meta spiritual authority figure (which represents an adult
authority living in our subconscious childhood memory) is going to yell at
us for having something we have no business having. So, we mess up
somehow, and end up achieving less, which is more in line of what we think
we deserve. Any area of life where this has happened, or you feel any of
these "not deserving" energy is evidence of limiting beliefs. Another piece
of evidence is any kind of feeling or suspicion that you are not good enough
in some way. Not smart enough, not young enough, not old enough, not
adjective enough.

Step One

Identify something you want, but you feel is associated with either of those
two feelings. That you are not allowed to get that, or you are not adjective
enough to get that.

Step Two

This is going to be painful, there's no way around it. In order to find the
exact grammatical structure of the negative belief, you've got to sort
through some of your imagined shortcomings. This won't feel good, but it's
necessary. First think of the thing you want. We'll use a million dollars as an
example. Then write the sentence stem:

I can't get a million dollars because...

Step Three

This is the painful part. Write down all the ways you can complete the
sentence. Many of your answers will externalize. Meaning you'll put the
responsibility outside of you. These won't help. The ones that will help are
the statements about you. About your capability. About your sense of
deserving. When you write these out, it should hurt. It should feel like an
emotional sucker punch. It may even conjure up horrible memories from
our childhood. If you start to feel a lump in your throat and water streaming
down your face, you're pretty close. For example, you might write down:

I don't deserve money.

I'm not smart enough.

I'm not educated enough.

I'm not clever enough.

Or, you might come up with statements like this:

I'm too dumb.

I'm too ugly.

I'm too adjective.

Either way, write down a few that seem to be true.

Step Four

Go through all the patterns, one through eighteen and pulverize the above
statements. First write down a reframe, and then keep going until you get to
a SILLY or humorous result. This will be very helpful. It doesn't matter if it
makes any sense. Remember, all cause-effect statements are false anyway,
so may as well take your limiting beliefs, and obliterate them with extreme
silliness. Keep up with this until you say that limiting belief out loud (the
same one that made you cry earlier) and it makes you laugh. Until it has
enough lough-out-loud silliness of "I am a reptilian porn star here on Earth
to take over the porn industry."

Long Game
This will take a while. Unfortunately, we have tons of negative beliefs up in
our brains. And most of the were put there by accident. Unless you went to
the Manchurian Candidate Kindergarten and Elementary school, your
negative beliefs were put there by accident. You were doing something
some adult saw you and had a second to respond and said whatever they
could think of in the moment to get you stop doing that. We all have a ton of
those ideas. Our mind-body systems were designed to live in a much, much
simpler environment than the one we live in. Consider having a brain filled
with limiting beliefs to be one of the costs of modern conveniences like
Internet porn and microwavable burritos. Get started as soon as you can. Do
this once per day, take one belief and go through and destroy it with the
patterns. Take your time. The more of your limiting beliefs you eliminate,
the more you'll really believe the things you need to in order to get whatever
you want out of life.
Worst Case Scenario Planning

The exercises from the previous chapter will take a long time. Ideally, you
should build up a permanent seek and destroy strategy. Negative beliefs are
kind of like whack-a-mole, or that snake headed monster from Greek
mythology. Every time you kill one, there's a bunch more. Eventually you
will feel that you are making progress. But for most normal humans, when
it comes to learning how to slowly go through and get rid of negative
beliefs, a suitable metaphor would be somebody who never exercises, and is
overweight by a few hundred pounds. For them, physical exercise would
have to be a very gradual and consistent process. It may take them a few
months before they started to feel the positive results. But they longer they
kept at it, the more they would feel the results. In a year or two, they would
start to actually feel athletic. This is about how long it will take with getting
rid of negative beliefs. Unfortunately, one belief that has been purposely
created by the self-help industry is that our lives can change quickly. On a
big scale, our lives can only change as quickly as our beliefs will change. If
you've struggled with money your entire life, you won't do a few exercises
in a weekend seminar and suddenly go out and start making stacks of cash.
Making money consistently requires a lot of positive beliefs. Beliefs about
your skills, beliefs about your value and worth, and these are unfortunately
our beliefs that get monkey hammered when we are young. Overcoming
years of negative (even if it was accidental and put there with a good
intention) programming takes a while. There is, however, a way to rip out
some negative ideas in a very specific way. Negative beliefs, when
removed, will slowly improve your overall outlook on life in general. But
we can target specific events, and specific people within those events for
some laser targeted improvements. You can also use these techniques to
slowly build up a much more powerful and dynamic social frame.

Prepare for The Worst

This is essentially a very solid and very old strategy. Of hoping for the best
and preparing for the worst. Hoping for the best is easy. We all do this all
the time. Hoping for a positive is natural, so we don't need any strategies.
Preparing for the worst is something we can learn to do very effectively.
And as it turns out, these same patterns will come in very handy. Imagine
you were going in to talk to your boss about a raise. You felt you deserved
one, but for some reason, your boss reminds you of your dad who scared
the crap out of you as a kid, so you don't feel so confident around him. This
comes across as having slightly weaker non-verbal communication. Since
your boss would rather not pay you more money, he would see this weak
non-verbal communication as an easy out. He may be very kind and
understanding, but you won't get the raise. This doesn't mean he's
consciously manipulating you. Remember, most communication is non-
verbal and subconscious. So, when we prepare for this event using the
techniques in this chapter, you'll do two things.

Imagine His Objections

The first step is to imagine all the objections he'll give you. Take some time
with this. Imagine all the different things he might say that would preclude
him from giving you a raise. Then take these objections one by one and
obliterate them with the patterns. This time, you'll need to keep your
responses serious and professional. Find at least three for each objection.
Play around them until they sound natural in your own voice. Then imagine
the objections he might come up with to each of those. This is kind of like
playing chess against yourself. Do this until you are confident you have
enough ammunition. Then practice both parts. Find a place where you can
play both parts, out loud, you vs. your boss. Keep going until you feel
confident that you can overcome the objections as he says them.

First Benefit

The first benefit is the obvious one. That you will not just standing there
and hope he says yes. You will have a logical, rational reason why you
should get a raise.

Second Benefit

Since you've taken all your worst feared outcomes and addressed them, you
will have a much stronger frame. Much stronger non-verbal energy. Much
more confidence.
Third Benefit

Your boss will know, at least subconsciously, that you have taken a lot of
time to think about this. There's something about knowing that our
adversary has taken time to get ready for an interaction. Asking for a raise
from your boss is not quite an adversarial relationship. But when we are
talking to somebody, and we realize they've planned this interaction, it
seems much more powerful on a deep level. It's one thing to deal with a
random stranger saying random things. But to have somebody before us
who is exhibiting any evidence that they've thought about this is hard to
shake off. It's a very subconscious feeling. We can imagine a guy who just
picked a random fight with us in a bar, vs. a guy who's been planning to
fight us for a long time. Just knowing a guy's been planning to fight us is
much more serious. In many U.S. states, lying in wait is a condition that
warrants the death penalty. Killing somebody accidentally is bad. Planning
to kill them is worse (pre-meditated). But planning and purposely
engineering the situation where we can kill them is downright cold blooded.
Sociopathic. While we aren't talking about murdering anybody, the idea of
having a potential disagreement, even a polite one, with somebody who has
planned and practiced and rehearsed this disagreement gives the
conversation a lot more seriousness. And it makes the frame of the person
who has done the thinking and planning and rehearsing much more power.

Fourth Benefit

If this is a work situation, just the fact that you've done this will make you a
more valuable employee. Proactively planning conversations to ensure the
best outcome is something plenty of managers would willing pay good
money for.

Paradox of Fear

This is when you'll find out (if you haven't already) the paradox of fear. If
we ignore our fears, we tend to increase the chances they'll happen. If we
prepare for them, and make ourselves as ready as we can, we tend to
decrease their likelihood.
Worst Case Insults

Another way to leverage this exercise is to imagine the worst-case insults

from the worst people. Insults far worse than anything that might come. For
example, consider there's coworker you deal with. And you are worried
they are going to insult you in the worst way possible. A way that highlights
your worst imagined trait. Now, in reality, that would never likely happen.
But when they do insult you, it's very easy to imagine they mean the worst-
case insult. To get rid of this, simply run their worst-case insult through the
ringer. So, when they do give you a normal, everyday insult, instead of
immediately thinking of your worst-case insult, you will have built a solid
inner response to the worst-case insult. So instead of looking at them with
shock and horror and emotional anguish, (like they hope) you can just
glance at them with a deadpan stare. "I'm sorry, what?" Or whatever else
you'd like to say.
Human Soft Spots

If you only wanted to practice physical defense, you'd need to practice a lot.
You'd have to imagine all the possible ways somebody could come at you.
You'd have to practice all the possible ways to defend against all those
possible ways. You'd have to train all these possible ways into your muscle
memory. This, of course, would take a while. On the other hand, if all you
wanted to do were to harm another human, it would be easy. Sneak up
behind them with a hammer and bash them in the head. Hopefully, you will
never do that, nor will you or anybody you know ever be bashed in the
head. And even in the realm of self-defense, there is elegant, and there is
not elegant. Elegant self-defense is staying on your toes and carefully using
their energy against them. Slightly less than elegant is ramming your car
keys into their eyes and kicking them in the nuts. (And then maybe once in
the face for good measure once they hit the pavement). Similarly, there is
elegant verbal defense. There is slightly less than elegant self-defense. And
then there is the verbal equivalent of bashing in somebody's head with a
hammer.

Human Soft Spots

When learning self-defense, you learn about all the soft spots. The easy
places to quickly discombobulate your enemy so you can run away.
Eyeballs, throat, groin, side of the knee, etc. Luckily, we all have a common
collection of emotional soft spots. Please be very careful with these. Most
of us don't like the idea of going to prison. But most of us also have a strong
internal restriction to harming another human unless we absolutely must.
(Even then a lot of us might not be able to.) Nobody would ever bash
somebody's head in with a hammer simply because they knew they could
get away with it. It's highly likely that this internal moral restriction is a
very strong, evolutionarily powerful instinct. We can imagine a tribe of
people who didn't mind bashing each other's heads in with rocks while they
slept. Clearly a tribe with this behavior would last very long. But verbal
attacks on these soft spots don't have the same level of internal resistance.
These are the things we can say in the heat of the moment, when we think
we are fighting fire with fire, but these are the things that it's very hard to
take back. Learning these will not come without costs. Once you have them
in your brain, the temptation to use them will be there. Make an easy to
follow rule that you'll never use these on friends, family, loved ones, ex-
loved ones, police officers, judges, IRS agents, or anybody you need to deal
with again in a professional manner. Just knowing you can use these will
significantly increase your confidence, frame and non-verbal energy. Very
much like somebody slowly reaches into their pocket or purse and gets their
keys ready for an eye-jab will also increase their confidence and posture.
First, we'll go through the various human soft spots, why they are soft spots,
and figure out tons of ways to deliver them with deadly viciousness.

Social Instincts

Most of these will be based on social instincts. We can think of all our
instincts as an internal regulation system on our behavior. We have instincts
that compel us to get things we need to survive. Satisfying these instincts
feels very good. Eating, being with friends, coming in out of the cold,
having sex, all of these are instincts. We need food, warmth, companionship
and more people. So, doing the things that get us these things makes us feel
very good. On the other hand, we have instincts that keep us from getting
too close to things that will kill us. Loneliness, hunger, lack of money,
social rejection, rejection from authority figures. These are all programmed
into us as deep fears to keep those things from happening. We can think of
all these social instincts as the social glue that kept us working well
together, even way back before we invented spoken language. All our
emotional soft spots, therefore, will be linked to any negative social
instincts. Or instincts that make us feel, on a deep level, that we are failing
miserably in the eyes of the tribe, both our peers and the leaders. Any
ancient caveman that felt this knew that he'd better shape up and fly right or
else he was done.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

This is a very powerful instinct that shows up in many places. Normally it

compels us to buy things we don't really need. Sir Isaac Newton, the super
genius of planet Earth, inventor of Calculus and discoverer of gravity was
famously taken in by FOMO. He bought in early in a market bubble of his
time (The South Sea Bubble). He got out later, financially ahead. But then
everybody else started getting in and making even more money. Warren
Buffet famously said that when all your idiot neighbors are making money,
you know you're in a bubble. Despite his scientific brilliance, Newton was
sucked in due to FOMO and eventually lost everything. FOMO is so
powerful because getting left behind is the absolute worst thing that can
happen to us on a social instinct level. Getting left behind by the tribe
means no more friends. No more sex. No more warmth. No more food. Just
being alone is bad enough but getting left behind because they all chose to
would be a very, very horrible feeling.

Components of FOMO

There are three powerful components of FOMO. One is social disapproval.

If you've ever watched high school drama movies, a common trope is the
girl who is filmed without her consent and then shared on social media.
Then she comes to school and everybody is pointing at her. If you add on to
this the disapproval of any authority figure, it's a billion times worse. We
can imagine our archetypical school girl running to the principal, her
parents, even the pastor at her church. Imagine if all of them said:

Well, that's what you get for being such a slut!

If this ever happened in real life, chances are, suicide would not be far
behind. We point this out to illustrate the real and deep emotional pain that
can be caused by both social disapproval and authority disapproval. One
thing that makes this much worse is the third element. This is something
that involves everybody knowing and planning how to deliver the social and
authority disapproval. To make the nightmare even worse, imagine if our
poor archetype had shown up to school only to find there was an assembly
in the auditorium. Everybody knew about it except her. When she shows up,
they deliver the boom. The show the video up on the screen, all the kids are
laughing, and the principal says:

We've spoken to your parents and your pastor, and we've all decided it's
best you leave town!
This would slam all the most feared social instincts at once. Social
approval, authority disapproval, and a kind of pre-determined conspiracy.
They decided to ostracize her before they told her they were ostracizing her.

Now ask yourself this very difficult question. Which would you rather have
happen to you? The most horrific scenario like the one described above,
where all your peers, all the authority figures you recognize, conspire
against you in the most public way possible? Or getting mistaken for a
mugger and getting rammed in the eye with keys and then kicked in the
nuts?

Over the next few chapters, we'll learn how to deliver such emotional horror
by using carefully chosen words and phrases. The best part is this will not
be very interactive. These means you can choose a target, do some research,
and come up with some very deadly phrases to keep handy in case you need
them. This way you need never say them. Only look at them and think
them, and they'll know from your non-verbal communication not to ever
mess with you.
Deadly Language - Theory

Language can be very simple and up front. But it can also be very deadly
and covert. In this chapter we'll cover the basic theory of how and why this
works. In the next chapter we'll cover some very specific techniques. Then
later we'll match those techniques with some soft spot attacks.

Dale Carnegie

Carnegie started a public speaking program in the early twentieth century.

His famous book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People," came from
his experiences in teaching self-development. In that book are ten basic
principles for creating positive relationships. It stands to reason that if those
ten principles will create positive relationships, we can use their opposite to
create negative relationships, or at least deliver emotionally painful ideas.
One of his principles is that you can convince anybody to do anything, so
long as they believe it was their idea. This is a very broad principle, and it
can be applied in many ways. This is essentially the idea behind some of the
best sales pages of all time. These are usually told in story format. For
example, we can imagine a sales page written to sell a certain kind of dog
food. A blatant, non-covert method would be to simply list the price, the
ingredients and the taste. A much more covert method would be to tell a
long story about a guy and his dog. Maybe he and his dog went on a kind of
adventure, and they tie in the type of adventure somehow to that brand of
dog food. By the end of the sales letter, the reader feels as if they've made
the decision on their own to buy that dog food. This is essentially the holy
grail of all advertising and marketing. To create an ad campaign that lets the
purchaser believe it was their decision to buy the product. We humans are
much more likely to stick with our opinions. On other hand, if we feel we
are buying a product because of a promise made by the advertiser, we will
be very skeptical. But if we believe it is our decision, especially if that
"realization" comes before we buy the product, we'll have essentially
convinced ourselves that we'll like it no matter what. We humans, after all,
tend to agree with our own opinion. This is one way to deliver these deadly
attacks. If you just walk up to your enemy and say, "Hey, buddy, everybody
hates you, they are all going to leave you behind," they'll look at you like
you are crazy. But if you say it in a way where they feel they have
discovered that idea on their own, it will have a much deadlier effect. There
are plenty of ways from a technical linguistic standpoint to deliver this
effect. Of course, it can't be totally their idea, they must associate it with
you somehow. We'll learn some patterns, so they'll know the message (and
the pain) is coming from you, but it will be very believable, and very hard
to defend.

Presuppositions

There is a whole class of language patterns called linguistic

presuppositions. These are ideas that are hidden inside of a sentence. The
main idea of the sentence is one thing, but the presupposition is hidden
inside. We all use these all the time, and as such we don't use these with
much elegance or even much conscious awareness. For example, consider
the following, which is something a frustrated person might say to their
spouse or partner:

Why are you being such a jerk today?

It seems on the surface like it's a simple question. But buried inside that
question is the idea that the receiver is being a jerk. But since that's not the
stated question, it's not so easy to disagree with. Just trying to answer that
question means you must accept the embedded part as true. This is kind of a
subconscious trick from the giver to the receiver. The giver says it. The
receiver shrugs their shoulders, thinking that by refusing to answer they are
at least not losing. But in addressing the surface structure, they accept the
embedded part that they are being a jerk. This is likely the subconscious
intention of the alleged question. To call their friend a jerk, and to get their
friend to agree they are a jerk. Why would somebody do this? This is a case
of subconscious externalizing. The person who asks the question is clearly
feeling that something is off. So does the person being asked the question.
The real intention, which is mostly subconscious, is for the person asking
the question to covertly trick the receiver of the question into accepting
responsibility for the "bad energy" between them. In a sense, the asker is
not seeking a solution, only to say, "There is some bad energy between us,
and it's your fault." This not only absolves them from blame, but it also
absolves them from responsibility to solve the problem. Few people ever
think about this. It is very subconscious and instinctive. We feel something
bad between us and our partner, or us and our friend, but we only want to
get rid of any responsibility, not really take any mental effort to figure out
and solve the problem. This is the extent that most of us use linguistic
presuppositions. Mainly to defend and externalize. To kind of "throw out"
ideas that we don't want to have to defend or explain. Of course, to a trained
assassin in the art of verbal self-defense, a perfect response to such a
question would be to first adopt the brain-fade curiosity mindset and then
ask?

What do you mean? Why do you think I'm being a jerk? What is it about my
behavior that makes you think I'm being a jerk?

Of course, we are getting ahead of ourselves. First, we'll need to figure out
the most important linguistic presuppositional structures as well as some
Dale Carnegie "your idea" techniques. These will take some practice. But
when using these defensively (and not in a sales or persuasion situation
which is much more positive and mutually beneficial) you only need to
memorize a few. Like remembering to ram your keys into their eyes. It is
worth noting that these same patterns can be used to covertly make people
feel fantastic around you. For example, we can use the same "jerk" pattern
and flip it around to be used as quick ego boost to anybody you'd like.

Why are you being so positive adjective today? Did you get something
special in your Cheerios or something?

Of course, you can substitute Cheerios for whatever you like.

Dude, why are all the girls checking you out? Are you wearing a different
cologne?

Why are you being so productive today? Did you get an extra-large coffee
this morning or something?

Why does this taste so good? Did you buy some secret seasoning or
something?
Why are you being so funny today? Did something really good happen this
morning?

Keep these positive ideas in mind as we move forward. Make sure you
understand the linguistic tools we'll be going over are just that. Tools. You
can use them to make people feel fantastic or make them wish they'd never
been born.
Deadly Language - Practice

We'll cover the presuppositions first. These are patterns that are designed to
hide ideas inside of a larger sentence. If you string a few of these together,
they'll be hard to unpack. The "why are you being suck a jerk today,"
sentence is easy to take apart, because the hidden idea "you are a jerk" is
not really hidden that well. When we combine multiple presuppositions,
your target won't know what hit them. We'll give basic examples commonly
used in advertising.

Pseudo Cleft Sentences

What is X about Y is....

This is when you create a label (X is Y) and put it inside another label. And
Y can be an idea on its own, or a cause - effect statement.

What is fantastic about this toothpaste is it makes your teeth much whiter.

Questions

This is the form of the hidden jerk sentence. When asking a question, the
listener is somewhat involuntarily tricked into trying to answer it.

Who is the first person you'd like to impress with your whiter teeth once you
start using this toothpaste?

Ordinal Numbers

First, second, third, etc. Whenever we hear any ordinal number, even if we
only hear one, we immediately start to assume there are whole bunch of
other items on the list.

Even though this is primarily a whitening toothpaste, the second thing

people realize about it is how effective it is at fighting tooth decay!
Rhetorical Questions

These are much like direct questions, but a little worse. Instead of tricking
the listener into trying to come up with a specific answer, they trick the
listener into simply pondering the meta answer.

How many people can benefit, and in how many ways from whiter teeth?

Change of State Verbs

Change, transform, turn into, etc.

These are verbs like, change, turn into, become, and they imply process.
When we sense a process, it's like a kind of idea movement, which makes it
hard to take apart and examine parts of the process.

This whitening toothpaste will transform what you think is possible!

Relative Clauses

Noun + who, which, that

These is useful for implying social proof. It's often used in advertising to
imply a positive trait about a product along with social proof.

Many people who use this toothpaste have found their teeth two shades
whiter, on average.

Change of Time Verbs and Adverbs

Begin, stop, continue, etc.

These are like the change of state verbs. Any time you describe a process
that is already ongoing, it's hard to stop and question some of the elements.
This particular pattern is used to describe processes in time, which can't be
reversed in reality and are equally hard to reverse mentally.
When you begin to see how immediately effective this whitening toothpaste
is, you'll be excited about smiling!

Factive Verbs and Adjectives

These used to describe a sense of knowing or realizing. You connect the

idea you want to be believed to a process of knowing or realizing, and it's
much harder to disagree with.

Once you realize how effective this toothpaste is, you'll never go back.

Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs

These are words like happily, unhappily, luckily, unfortunately. Whatever

word or phrases that comes after these are generally much harder to argue
with than if you said them directly.

Luckily, once people find out how much this toothpaste whitens their teeth,
they never go back!

Subordinate Clause of Time

Before, after, since, etc.

These are linked to the idea of cause-effect. This makes them very hard to
disagree with.

After people start using this whitening toothpaste, their social lives are so
much more exciting.

Generic Noun Phrases

These are very flexible and very powerful, as you can use them to reference
a powerful social group. They generally need to be used with other patterns.
Academic experts, learned professionals, etc.

This whitening formula was created by a very advanced group of scientists.

Vague Patterns

Linguistic presuppositions are designed to secretly implant ideas in their

minds. The following patterns are used to describe vague ideas. But since
they are vague, the listener will have to come up with their own specific
meaning. If used correctly, these can be put together to create the Carnegie
effect.

Single Binds

The more you X the more you Y....

The more you use this toothpaste, the more you'll find out how wonderful it
is.

Tag Questions

Put a simple tag question at the end of the sentence. This will trick the
listener into searching for an answer, rather than questioning what was just
said.

You do realize how important it is to have whiter teeth, don't you?

Mind Reading

This is when you purport to know what your target is thinking about. This
isn't really mind reading, but very accurate guessing. But when you
accurately guess about common things, it can seem very accurate.

I know you have people in your life you'd like to use patterns on.

Unspecified Verbs

These are sentences where you allude that something is happening, but you
don't say exactly how.
You will learn to use these techniques with amazing results.

Pronouns

These are used to reference people without your target knowing who you
are talking about. Normally a pronoun comes after a proper noun Consider:

John and I are going to lunch, and he said you might like to go.

That makes sense. But consider this:

We are going to lunch and she told me she doesn't want you going, so
please stay here.

General Use and Practice Tips

It's best to practice these with positive ideas. If you spend too much time
practicing these for negative defensive use, it can lead to lingering dark
clouds in your mind. As mentioned in the last chapter, these are fantastic to
use to make people feel fantastic, without really knowing why. The best
way to figure out how is to just start writing these out. The more you do
that, the more you'll build in these structures into your brain. Consider the
jerk question from the last chapter. That is how most of us use these. Very
haphazardly and inefficiently. Kind of like how an untrained fighter would
try to punch somebody. Haphazardly, inefficiently and ineffectively. But
since you can use these both positively and negatively, training them in
positively will also help you learn how to use them negatively. By training
them in positively, you'll gain some useful and very helpful skills. It will
also help you deliver the negative examples (next chapter) with much more
deadliness and effectiveness. To practice, just start writing these out. Like
the reframes, this will be clunky and frustrating at first. But the more you
write, the more you'll start to develop your own style.
Deadly Language - Examples

The general idea is to take the worst feared instinctive feelings and wrap
them up with as many of these as possible. This can be very vague, so
nobody really needs to know what you mean. This will also give you
plausible deniability. For example, if somebody insulted you and you
replied with:

Oh yea? I heard you are getting divorced!

That is a common comeback. It is a vicious comeback. But it is also very,

very specific. It leaves nothing to the imagination. It does the job, of getting
the attention off you and back on them, but it also makes you look pretty
bad. Everybody will remember exactly what you said, and they will have a
good idea of how you know. In the very short term (a couple of seconds or
minutes) it will do the trick. But the further out in time, the worse off you'll
be. On the other hand, consider saying something like this:

Yeah, maybe you're right. But the things I've heard them talking about what
you've done? What's surprising is that nobody has told you about it. She
said maybe later today. Was there anything else you needed to tell me or
was that it?

This is much vaguer. And it's much more complicated. And it is absolutely
devoid of any actual content. It will make everybody wonder what you
know and how you know, including the person who made the mistake of
insulting you. In fact, after a couple of minutes, nobody will be sure what
you said. If you said the one about the divorce, that word, "divorce," will
remain at the core of any gossip. But since the above vague paragraph has
zero actual content, yet a lot of impending doom, people will fill in their
own content. And once they find any content, they'll change how they
remember the event to match that content. Even better, if they insulted you
in front of others, and you maintained you cool, walked up and whispered
this to them, their facial expressions (horror, confusion, etc.) would do all
the work for you. Everybody would be talking about what you might have
said and the effect. All you would need to do is say, "No, no, I've already
said too much." Now, granted, sauntering up and whispering that into the
ear of an insulter would take massive courage, but it would teach them to
never insult you again. When reading through these examples, imagine
delivering them as a whisper that only you and your target can hear. Or if
you are feeling particularly vicious, imagine leaving these as anonymous
notes on their desk. Even if they share the notes, that itself will be enough
to start some juicy gossip.

Specific Examples

Generic Noun Phrase

People are already talking about you and not in a good way.

Subordinate Clause of Time

After you hear what people are saying about you, you might want to update
your resume.

Once word gets around about what some people really think about you, you
might want to start looking for a new set of friends.

Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs

Fortunately, they've already found a replacement for you. Have they told
you yet?

Unfortunately, you haven't heard what some people have been saying about
you. I don't like to participate in gossip, but what she told me was pretty
painful if only half of it is true.

Change of State Verbs

After you hear what they've been saying, it might be too late to change their
mind.

Factive Verbs and Adjectives

After you realize what so many people have been saying about you, I don't
think much can be done.

I hadn't realized so many people feel the same way about you. I thought she
was the only one.

I hadn't realized that they'd already decided what to do with you. Obviously,
you don't know yet.

Change of Time Verbs and Adverbs

When you stop and realize what's being said behind your back, you might
want to take some time to plan how you're going to respond. But if you
continue to pretend you don't know, it's probably already too late.

Relative Clauses

People that I've talked to think that some of the things others have been
saying about you are too harsh, but I try to stay out of things like this.

Rhetorical Questions

Do you even care about all the negative things being said about you behind
your back?

Ordinal Numbers

The second thing you might consider is to figure out why somebody would
start such ugly rumors about you.

Questions

Why do you think they've been saying that about your productivity reports?

Pseudo Cleft Sentences

What is amazing to me is that you still have friends after all the things I've
heard from them.

Single Binds

The more I hear about you the more I realize those original rumors are
true.

Tag Questions

You do realize that most of the people that are friendly to your face say
vicious things behind your back, don't you?

Mind Reading

I know what you are so worried about, especially in light of the recent news
about that negative thing that happened.

Unspecified Verbs

Those things that people are saying about you are going to originally spiral
out of control. Maybe you should do something about it before it's too late?
Or maybe it already is too late.

Pronouns

She told me that they were discussing what to do about your, uh, issue, and
she said it wasn't a very pleasant discussion. I'm sure glad I'm not you, and
both he and she feel the same way.

How to Practice

These are best practiced first in the abstract, using an imaginary enemy. If
you like, find some gossip worthy situations on any TV show you enjoy,
and pretend to be one of the characters. Then go through this list and
augment these to use in those TV situations. In general, the best way to deal
with unexpected insults from unexpected people is the simple, brain-fade,
"What..." type. These are very vicious and need a bit of planning to use
properly. Also, you can use these playfully with your friends, just be very
careful and make sure everybody knows you’re kidding. Even then be
careful, because even a slight insinuation of any negative social instincts
can be very mentally painful. The combination of presuppositions, vague
patterns, and negative social instincts is best used only in dire situations,
where your actual reputation is at stake. Much like physical arts, you'll find
the more you practice these and imagine using them, the less likely you'll
actually need to use them. We'll go through some specific strategies in the
next couple chapters to do just that.
Book of The Dead

An old adage recommends that we keep our friends close, but we keep our
enemies closer. This is a good idea. If you have people in your life that you
don't particularly like to be around, for fear of verbal attacks, the next few
chapters will outline a strategy that will help you to become much more
confident around them. Eventually, you will no longer fear them. They may
even fear you. All without ever needing to say anything to them. This will
be a paradox much like in physical martial arts. The more you train, the less
you'll actually need to use the skill. Your non-verbal communication will
project such a strong and confident frame nobody would dare attack you. To
get to that level, you'll need to train as if you were preparing an assault.

Identify Enemies

The more enemies you identify, the better. Always keep in mind that the
goal is to not actually attack them. The goal is to mentally rehearse
attacking them or defending yourself from their attacks. The more you
prepare yourself mentally, the stronger your non-verbal energy will be
around them and the less likely they are to attack. Recall that our worst
fears come true only if we ignore those worst fears. The more we prepare
for their inevitability, the less likely they are to transpire. The first step in
that regard is to make a kill list of sorts. The people that you would feel
least confident getting into a drawn-out shouting match with in front of
others. Targets that, if they came up and started flinging insults at you,
would make you cower in fear, unable to even face them. This even can be
people from TV, such as talk show hosts and politicians whom you dislike,
but don't think you would be able to withstand a verbal onslaught. Take
your time and build up as big a list as you can. Create a special notebook
for this purpose, your own personal kill list. Obviously, you want to keep
this private!

Find Weak Points

For each of your sworn enemies, start to develop a list of their soft spots.
Start off by listing all the authority figures they respect and admire. The
authority figures they seem to follow the most. These can be people they
don't know personally but admire and respect. These can be their bosses at
work. These can be coaches or teachers at your school. Any list of people
they would consider to be authority figures. Next is to find people that they
would like to think of themselves as an authority figure to. Not necessarily
people who actually see them as an authority, although there will be some
overlap. These are people that they like to think as their followers. Social
media followers, friends that respect their opinions, or people that report
directly to them at work. Next is to develop a list of their social peers.
Those around them they feel relatively equal with on the social hierarchy.
Close friends they trust and share secrets with. Friends they spend a lot of
time with. Make an attempt to identify their very close friends, the kind
they would help out or ask for help in dire situations. Next, find who they
might consider to be their competition for higher social status. People
whom they would not like to see rise above them on the social hierarchy.
People they are secretly jealous of. People whom they pretend to like
publicly, but you have an idea they secretly loathe.

Know Your Enemy Like Yourself

Sun Tzu famously said (paraphrased) that if you know your enemy like
yourself, you will never lose a battle. Collecting all this information about
an enemy seems contrary to how most of us would like to behave. If we
have an enemy in our social circle, or worse, at work, they are the last thing
we would like to think about. Paradoxically, simply going through this
process of collecting as much information about enemies as we can will
lessen their control over our emotions. They are our enemy largely because
we don't think we can resist their attack. But the more information we
collect on them, the more human and naturally weak they can become, even
if in our mind.

Worst Possible Scenarios

Now you've got an exhaustive list of their social and authority situation, it's
time to do some evil daydreaming. Think of all the horrible things that
could happen to them based on what we know about our worst feared
instincts. Imagine them getting yelled at by their most respected authority
figure. Imagine them being told by all their respected social peers that they
are forever kicked out of the group and will never be allowed to return.
Imagine their worst enemy being elevated above them socially and
engineering a coup of sorts that has them forever ostracized. This sounds
horribly evil, but when you see what we're building up to, it will make
sense. Ideally, you will never mention any of this, you won't be making any
of these things come true. This only the first step in a very strong, internally
generated, mental frame of self-defense. Write out several scenarios that
involve their worst fears coming true, based on the worst possible social
instincts. Imagine they've done something horrible, and everybody knows
about it, including their respected authority figures. Imagine they are having
secret meetings about it behind their back. Imagine as many different
scenarios as possible. Write them out in full detail. Imagine you are a
terribly powerful dark wizard and can conjure up horribly evil spells and
cast them on your enemies. Be as vicious as you can. Just keep in mind we
are only now laying the ground work.

Come Up with Five Distinct Scenarios

Write five separate situations where they do something horrible, everybody

slowly knows about it, and they eventually get ostracized in a public and
painful way, losing everything. Be as creative and vindictive as you can. Be
vague about the thing they do which causes the damage. Be clear that it is
something they've done, and it is being negatively judged by everybody.
When you've got these, we're ready for the next step.
Enemies Closer

Now you can take the five scenarios you've written out, and carefully run
them through the patterns from before. The vague patterns and the linguistic
presuppositions. Take all the people in the scenarios and replace them with
vague pronouns. They, people who've talked about this, people in charge,
any kind of generic noun phrase you can come up with. Then take the
things these generic noun phrases are doing and talking about and come up
with as many extremely vague statements as you can. The original five
imaginary descriptions from last chapter can be as specific as you want. The
task now is to make them very vague yet ominous sounding. Create
statements that allude that those generic noun phrases are having
discussions about them and the hammer is about to drop. Make sure when
you say these statements, it gives you complete plausible deniability. No
names, no specific times, no specific actions, only something you've heard.
Make them sound both complex and vague. Look over some of the
examples given previously and modify them. The reason for coming up
with very specific scenarios first, instead of just using the vague statements
is as follows. If you were to just use the vague statements, without having
any mental idea of what they mean, they wouldn't be very congruent from a
non-verbal communication standpoint. For example, suppose you had a
boss that you didn't like. And suppose you said the following:

I heard he did something that might make us need a new boss soon.

This sounds pretty bad, but if you didn't have any specific idea in mind of
what he did, or what you thought he did, it wouldn't be that congruent, and
therefore not believable. On the other hand, if when you said, "he did
something," you actually imagined something very specific and very
horrific (like murdered and ate his neighbor) your non-verbal
communication would be much more congruent. The purpose of going
through the trouble to conjure realistic scenarios is to give you something to
imagine mentally, which will give your non-verbal energy much more
believability. So, when they ask for more information, when you shake your
head, yet give a slightly evil twinkle to your eye, it will seem much more
ominous.
Practice Saying Them

Once you've got several statements, practice saying them out loud. Say
them several times until you feel comfortable and normal saying them. It
may feel like you are breaking a universal human law, that you are saying
something that isn't true. What you are really doing is saying something that
is very vague but thinking something that isn't true. Your only purpose of
doing this is ultimately defensive. To develop the energy to prevent an
attack. Remember, you aren't likely to ever say these things out loud to
anybody. So far, this is like practicing in the dojo of your mind. Keep
saying these phrases out loud until you can close your eyes and say them,
and imagine you are saying them directly to your enemy.

Practice Saying Them After Getting Insulted

Imagine hearing your worst feared insult from your attacker. Imagine
replying quickly with a few of your vague and deadly statements. Close
your eyes and imagine them saying the worst possible thing they could say.
Imagine they are saying it in front of the worst possible people you could
imagine them saying it in front of. And keep replying with your vague and
deadly statements. Practice over and over again, until you are not fazed in
the least by their attack, and you can reply quickly, calmly and deadly.

Practice the Whisper of Death

Take it up a notch. Imagine them saying the worst possible insult. Imagine
not being fazed in the least. Imagine calmly walking over and whispering
the vague and deadly statement into their ear. Literally whisper it out loud.
Say it closely, calmly like a snake enjoying the delivery of deadly venom.
Say it sweetly, pull back slowly and smile. Imagine watching their face
show the horror and terror and confusion. Imagine that you have easily
shifted the energy of the entire crowd from their insult to you, back to their
face, and the minds of the onlookers wondering what you could possibly
have said to them.

Practice the Exit Strategy

Once you deliver the vague and deadly statement, chances are the attacker,
or somebody will wonder how you know what you know. They'll wonder
who you heard it from. Come with a statement that gives you plausible
deniability and is also clear you won't be saying any more.

I don't know. That's just something I've heard. I probably shouldn't have
said that. I won't say any more.

Something like that is fine. Practice all three, as often as you can, until you
do not fear your enemy any more. Practice with as many insults as you can.
Practice with as many people as you can. As you can imagine, this will take
plenty of time. But this will build up your non-verbal frame to very strong
levels of confidence. Think of this as exercise for your frame just like
physical exercise is for your body. Do a little bit each day.

Three Quick Steps

Once you've got the scenarios down, and have turned them into vague and
deadly statements, you'll be able to practice these same things on many
different enemies, and many different insults per enemy. Imagine hearing
the insult, imagine your response, and imagine your exit statement. The
statement of both plausible deniability and the cutting off of further
communication. Imagine people asking and you only smiling and shaking
your head. So long as the vague statement is actually vague, and doesn't
contain any specific people or specific verbs, you'll having nothing to worry
about.

Create Five Power Statements

Last chapter you developed five specific and horrific scenarios involving
the social downfall of your enemy. Now we recommend five statements that
are vague and deadly. They can be any five statements. Each should have an
exit statement. It can be the same for each or can be different based on the
statements and the scenarios. Once you've got five ready statements and
their accompany exit strategies, you're ready for the next step.
Stare of Death

Way back in the beginning we recommended purposely building a state of

confidence. Where you purposely recalled early memories and made them
real and powerful. This will be similar, but it will be a lot easier. Once
you've gotten to the point where you have five statements and their exit
strategies, it's time to build your stare of death.

Step One

Practice at home, when nobody can overhear you. Imagine hearing an

insult, or just imagine your enemy. Imagine saying or whispering the
statement to your enemy. Imagine their look of horror and confusion.
Imagine the look of confusion of all the onlookers. Imagine giving your exit
statement and removing yourself from the situation. When rehearsing this,
make it as powerful and as deadly as possible. Attach each of these
statements of doom to one finger on your dominant hand. Practice holding
or flexing that finger as you practice that particular statement. Keep
practicing until you can develop your own force field based on firing your
trigger, which is attached to one of the fingers on your dominant hand.
Practice often until you feel real inner strength and power. Continue to
practice firing your trigger finger of death until you can call up feelings of
confidence and power relatively quickly.

Step Two

Practice firing your trigger finger in social situations where you might see
or encounter your enemy. This may take a while, so take your time. Don't
rush yourself. Get to the point where you feel just as confident outside the
safety of your home as you while in your home.

Step Three

Practice in the vicinity of others. First when people are not talking. In
elevators, at crosswalks, when waiting in line at the supermarket or the post
office. Fire your triggers while you are slowly walking around semi
crowded areas, like bookstores or malls. See if you can notice people
treating you with a little bit more respect. Walk down the center of a
supermarket aisle while firing your trigger and see if you can
subconsciously persuade people to get out of your way without having to
make eye contact. Try this same experiment in as many social places as
possible. Don't be rude but get to the point where you don't need to ask
people to get out of your way. Walk slowly and calmly, fire your triggers of
death and radiate powerful defensive subconscious energy. Conjure up any
imagination about yourself as you like to enhance the effect. Imagine you
are protected by a powerful sphere of electrical energy, and you can use to
obliterate those who displease you.

Step Four

Practice flexing your defensive shields when you are ordering food and
drinks from bartenders or wait staff. Be as outwardly calm and neutral as
you can, but inwardly, fire and feel the triggers associated with the
statements. Keep this up until you feel that people are giving you their full
attention and are treating you with the respect you deserve.

Step Five

The next level is when you are having eye contact, face to face
conversations with people in your social circle, or people at your level at
your place of work. Asking questions, listening to answers, sitting in
meetings. Practice wherever you feel comfortable. Always have a calm and
neutral outer demeanor, but inside you’re firing your triggers of death. This
will cause your outer demeanor to change slightly, but ideally it will be
perceived subconsciously by your peers.

Firing the Stare

Once you have practiced in all these scenarios, and any more you'd like to
practice, it's time to practice the stare of death. Look at your target and
imagine a full internal representation of saying those vague and deadly
statements. Imagine your target being obliterated by them, and suddenly
being the center of deadly and vicious gossip. Ideally you will make eye
contact and fire your triggers. If your outer energy is strong enough, they
will quickly lower your eyes.

Make Your Enemy Submit

The ultimate goal of this is to initiate any kind of conversation with your
enemy and fire the triggers while using your covert stare of death. At this
point, you may need to prepare an answer to a question. You may easily go
too far, and they may think you are angry for some reason. That's fine. Just
use the old standby:

What do you mean? What is it about me that makes you think I'm angry?

Practice shifting internally from the brain-fade-confusion state to the stare-

of-doom state. When you get to this level, you need never worry about
being insulted again. Understand this will take a lot of time and patient
practice to get to this level.

Road Better Than the Inn

In the process, you will have developed a whole range of skills. You will
have carefully made your enemies, which may seem to terrify you now,
until mere mortals that have just as many weaknesses as you. Simply the
process of examining your enemies through the lens of potential negative
social instincts, they will seem much less threatening, and much more
manageable. It may seem like an evil and horrible thing to do, but the
alternative is to leave yourself mentally and psychically open to any random
attacks. Consider this to be purely a mental exercise. You'll never need to
say or make happen any of the things you are imagining. But practicing
thinking about them, and saying them, is just as important as practicing a
spin-kick hundreds and hundreds of times. The more you practice it, the
less likely you'll actually need it.

Unexpected Benefits

Anxiety is a killer in many ways. In a very real and literal way, anxiety and
the stress it causes is responsible for a host of medical issues, including
high blood pressure and lowered immune resistance and efficiency. Just
doing these exercises will lower your social anxiety and stress, and thereby
increase your health. On a deeper level, when your brain is experiencing
any anxiety, even if it's in your subconscious, that is burning up a lot of
your processor power. Anxiety is a low level of fight or flight energy. When
your body is getting ready to fight or fun away, it is impossible to think
creatively and productively. When you practice destroying your enemies,
you will worry less about them. The amount of thinking capacity and
creativity you will unlock will be enormous. The amount of positive social
signals you will begin to notice will be enormous. In reality, the benefits of
this exercise, of going through the process of obliterating all your enemies,
are far too great to predict. You will become much more confident, much
more relaxed, much more attractive and much more creative. All without
firing a single shot at your enemy. Conquer your enemies within, and your
rewards without will be enormous.
Defense Against the Dark Arts

Understanding all these deep structures of language can be a bit

disheartening. Most people have feelings, and these feelings get translated
into words. Then those words are usually translated into similar feelings in
the receiver. When two friends or colleagues are talking, and they both have
positive intentions, this is fine. When you are talking to a stranger to pass
the time, and you both have positive intentions, this is fine. Only when
people try and subtly say things to get under our skin does this become
troublesome. Before you started reading this guide, there were plenty of
things that you heard from others, that bothered you in some way, most
likely partially subconsciously, but you didn't quite know why. Sometimes
these "insults" are so weak that you may have shrugged them off to a
misunderstanding. But once you understand the hidden ideas inside our
language (wrapped up by these linguistic presuppositions), it's very hard to
shrug them off again. They say that ignorance is bliss, and you are about to
learn one reason why. If you do take the time to drill these linguistic
presuppositions into your brain (and you should, as the benefits far
outweigh the negatives) you may find some uncomfortable things. There
was a science fiction movie that came out during the 80's called, "They
Live." The idea was that half the people living among us were actually
aliens. And you could see them if you wore special glasses. Without the
glasses everything looked normal. But once you put the glasses on, you
could see the horror. The aliens were ugly, they were in charge, and they
were running a secret campaign to drive humans to mindlessly consume as
much as possible. Of course, you won't find out that people are aliens. But
you what you begin to see, you won't be able to un-see. Your friends, your
colleagues and even family members are actually letting on a lot more than
they and you think. Once you train your brain to see these linguistic
presuppositions everywhere, you'll notice the hidden fears and ideas people
want to "put out there" but don't want to defend. They don't want you to
notice. In this chapter, we'll cover a few of the most common techniques
people use and some easy strategies to defend. Next chapter we'll cover all
the presuppositions and give you a training recommendation to train your
brain to see them.
General Rules for Defense

The best defense is to simply stay calm. As mentioned, any negative

statement or suggestion that is meant to put you off balance won't work if it
is treated purely as an objective statement. Brain-fade-curiosity is your
friend. If you suspect they meant something negative, but you aren't quite
sure what, simply use the, "what do you mean?" response. If they seem to
be implying something, don't blindly accept it, ask them why they think
that. Or what it is about you that makes them think that.

Just Saying

A common tactic is to toss out a statement, and then mentally retreat if it

doesn't work. This is when people say, "I was just saying..." Whenever
anybody says, "Just saying," that indicates the thing they said before that
statement didn't get the result they were hoping for. This is a very subtle
admission that they were trying to create an outcome that didn't happen.
You could let it slide, or you could ask them why, specifically, they said
what they said. When they say, "just saying," ask them why they were
saying it. Ask them what they meant, specifically about what they "just
said." If they try to retreat further and say, "Dude, it's just an expression,"
you can let them off the hook or keep pressing. Say something like this:

Yes, I understand that. But in English, there are hundreds, thousands of

expressions. Why, specifically, did you choose that one?

If they accuse you of getting angry, simply remain calm, (brain-fade-

curiosity) and ask:

What do you mean? What is it about me that makes you think I'm getting
angry?

The Tommy DeVito Pattern

This is the source of the famous "You're funny," bit from the movie,
"Goodfellas." Actor Joe Pesci was playing a mobster, who was famous for
having a temper. A younger kid laughed at one of his jokes, and Tommy
DeVito (Pesci's character) went into "meta model mode." He became very
serious, and started asking him why, specifically he thought he was so
funny. He didn't quite stay passive, in fact he got specifically defensive, but
the poor kid was suddenly afraid he was about to get killed. It turned out he
was only joking the whole time. This is the same kind of response you can
get when you switch into brain-fade-curiosity mode and keep asking why
people said the things they do. What they specifically meant about it. Since
most people never plan what they are going to say, suddenly being on the
spot and having to explain exactly why they chose the words they did is not
anything anybody can respond to without feeling a lot of pressure. You can
have a lot of fun practicing with your friends. If you use this for real, on
somebody who you honestly believe was trying to undermine you, it is
critical that you say as calm and emotionally even as possible. But all you'll
really need to do is to do this once or twice. You'll soon develop the
reputation of somebody who "nothing gets past." One way it might happen,
is the person will say something, you'll question it, and they'll say, "Just
saying," or "it's just an expression." One or two question later, they'll be
apologizing, without ever explaining why they said they said. They may
even say something like, "You're right, I shouldn't have said that," to which
you can do a couple of things. One is to let it slide and accept their apology.
Or you could go even deeper, and say:

I don't understand. Why are you apologizing? I'm still not sure what you
meant when you said that.

So long as you keep your cool, and even smile and joke around, they will
start to feel really under pressure, especially if there are other people
watching. This is definitely something you can enjoy practicing with your
friends. See how long you can go before they beg for mercy. Just stay as
neutral as possible. Pretend you are Spock or an AI robot. And just keep
asking what they meant when they said that, or what any statement means.

Beware of Wh- Setups

The most famous of these questions is, "When did you stop beating your
wife." The presupposition that there was a point in time when you did beat
your wife. The reason this works is our brains are trained to shift into
"question-answer" mode as soon as we hear a Wh- word. Why, when,
which, what, etc. So, when the presupposition hits, we are thrown off guard.
We were expecting a simple question, but they snuck in a presupposition
that is not true. This is very much a verbal sucker punch, especially if it is
done in front of others. Simply by pausing before responding, it looks as if
you are "caught." If you wait too long before you reply, it looks if you are
trying to evade admitting your wife-beating habits. So, whenever you
suspect somebody is setting you up, consider training yourself to
immediately shift into brain-fade-curiosity mode whenever you hear a
question word. Allow your brain to digest the entire question, and its
implications before you allow yourself to respond. Imagine a kind of mental
space in front of you, like the foyer of a large building that serves as a
temperature barrier. Imagine the question is leaving their mouth, and you
won't consider it until the entire question is out in the open. This will take
time, because we don't like social attention, especially if we are sitting there
trying to answer a question when everybody is looking. So, we
subconsciously shift into "I'd better hurry up and answer this, so I don't look
stupid" mode whenever we hear a question. The trick is to get comfortable
remaining silent while you think about how to answer any questions. Once
you practice this, you can easily reply to the wife beater question with:

What do you mean? What makes you think I ever beat my wife? Are you
accusing me of beating my wife?

So long as you remain calm, you can take any question or implied insult
and fling back in their face. Once they are on the defensive, you can use the
Tommy DeVito technique for as long as you want. Just don't stab out their
eyes with a pencil!
Training for Presuppositions

In this chapter we'll go over the entire list of presuppositions. If anybody is

going to slide an idea into a sentence (consciously or unconsciously) they'll
use one or more of these patterns. At the end we'll go over some easy ways
to train them into your brain. Consider these your secret weapon in any
form of communication; hearing speaking, writing or reading.

Comparative As

as....as....

Nothing is as powerful as presuppositions.

Comparative

er, more, less...

Understanding presuppositions is much better.

Selection Restriction

Doing X precludes Y

When you start practicing these, your life will never be the same.

Proper Names

Using any name presupposes that it exists.

King Phillip II of Macedonia knew important secrets we should learn.

Definite Description

Any description presupposes it is true.

This pattern will increase your communication skills by 15.45%.

Stressed Sentences

Whenever any word is stressed, spoken or written.

These patterns are very important.

Cleft Sentences

It is... It was....

It is your dreams of a better future that will make learning these so easy.

Counterfactual Conditional Clauses

Talking about something that didn't happen before as if it did.

If you had learned these five years ago, you'd already be a millionaire by
now.

Change of Place Verbs

Come, go, arrive, depart

When you start practicing these every day, you'll leave behind all social
anxiety.

Quantifiers

only, even, just

These aren't just for defending against insults, these are for making money.

Negative Questions

Are these patterns not the best ones in the world?

Repetitive Verbs and Adverbs

Repeatedly, return, replace, etc.

You'll repeatedly be glad you learned these when you see how much money
and sex they get you.

Spurious Not

I wonder if you are not already wondering how much sex and money you'll
get with these patterns?

Some Quantifiers

some, each, every, few,

Some people who learn these use a few of them to create financial empires.

Repetitive Cue Words

Too, also, either, again, back

You'll come back again and again to the power of these, every time you
practice them.

Complex Adjectives

New, old, former, present

Any new insults you get after you start practicing these will be a source of
endless laughter.

Contrary to Expectation

Should you not realize just how powerful these are, try them out for a few
days and prepare to be amazed.
Generic Noun Phrases

People who study these patterns make a hundred times as much as people
who don't.

Subordinate Clause of Time

Before, after, during, since, etc.

After you've practiced writing these out, you'll have X-ray vision into
people's brains.

Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs

Luckily, fortunately, happily, etc.

Luckily, you are learning these now, so they'll come in handy the rest of
your life.

Change of State Verbs

Change, transform, turn into, become, etc.

You'll transform your entire life with these patterns into a rock and roll sex
money party.

Factive Verbs and Adjectives

Odd, aware, know, realize

Once you truly realize the power of these, you'll never want to leave home
without them.

Change of Time Adverbs

Begin, stop, start, etc.

When you start practicing these every day, every aspect of your life will
change.

Relative Clauses

Noun + Who, which, that

People that study these are much smarter than those who know nothing
about them.

Rhetorical Questions

Who cares how long it takes to practice these? You'll enjoy it when your
income doubles.

Ordinal Numbers

First, second, third, etc.

The second thing you'll be able to do with these is secretly implant thoughts
into people's brains.

Questions

Who do you think will be the first person whose insults you obliterate with
these tools?

Pseudo Cleft Sentences

What is X about Y is...

What is fantastic about these patterns is you'll see them everywhere once
you practice them.

Pronouns
He, she, they

He uses these patterns to make money and she uses them to brainwash
people into singing about bananas.

How to Practice

Many of these are kind of confusing. These are not the kind of things you
read about in a book and then understand. These patterns already exist in
your brain, since they are part of language. The best way to train these is to
start writing them out. To start, copy the patterns as they are above. Then
start to alter them however you like. Presuppose positive things about you,
about your future, or about any of the goals you have regarding these
techniques. It will take a while. But we strongly recommend doing these
exercises for at least a couple weeks. Once through every day. We all use
these patterns without thinking, subconsciously. So, we aren't really aware
of the relationship between our thoughts and our words. But once you start
to see how these can be very accurate representations of our deeper and
unconscious thoughts, you'll notice two things. One is you'll start to feel a
sense of real control over the ideas you can slip into other people's minds.
Being able to sneak in positive ideas will make them feel good, but they
won't know why. They'll just know they feel good whenever you are
around. The other thing you'll be able to do is notice all the ideas that are
hiding. This will be the disheartening part. Most of us speak a lot of
negativity without really knowing it. We can sense of from others, but only
when it is very strong. But after you practice writing these out, you'll start
to see every single idea that people are putting in between their words. Even
the ideas they aren't quite saying out loud. You'll start to get a real idea of
how people think. Some people now you might not want to be around
anymore. And some people whom you think are average and unremarkable
will surprise you at their lack of inner negativity. The more you practice
these patterns, the less you'll need to guess about the quality of other
people's inner state. Many people have a very strong intuition about other
people. When they are happy, when they are sad, when they are being less
than truthful. Practicing these patterns will give you a much more conscious
awareness of everything that a person is thinking or feeling when they
speak. This will, in a very real way, give you a genuine "They Live,"
feeling. You'll know who the monsters are and who aren't. You'll know who
to trust, and who not to. You'll know who is genuine and honest and good to
be around, and who only pretends to be. Take your time, start writing out
these patterns, and give this skill time to grow.
Gray Area Transitions

As you begin to practice the linguistic presuppositions, you'll begin to

notice them in the speech of others. Spoken language is an "in-the-moment"
expression of the deep and complex thoughts of the speaker. When we use
linguistic presuppositions, we rarely do so consciously or deliberately. Most
of us would be surprised at our own linguistic presuppositions. Our
language isn't something we think about, but it can be a powerful window
into our thinking, how we view ourselves and how we view the world. As
you increase your ability to notice the real time use of linguistic
presuppositions by others, we recommend you keep a journal of these
events. As you continue to practice the patterns and increase your ability to
notice them, you can practice how you might ask them about these
presupposed ideas.

Presuppositions Reveal Inner Truth

The linguistic presuppositions others use will reveal their true inner beliefs,
many of which are unknown even to them. Skilled therapists, counselors,
and even interrogators have trained themselves to listen carefully to the
specific language patterns used to see what's really going on beneath the
surface. If you practice consistently enough, you will soon see things others
believe with more clarity than they see themselves. You will begin to see
through the cracks of their own self-deception.

Meta Model to Peel Back the Layers

With a thorough understanding of the meta model, you can, if you like,
carefully ask questions that will either help them to see their own beliefs, or
to obliterate their beliefs they are intending to do you harm. This is very
difficult to do in real time. Before we talked about Sun Tzu's strategy of
being the pig to eat the tiger. This is easy enough when done with friends,
or when building up your target for the knockout punch. But if you deliver
too much of a punch too soon, your target will clam up and never speak to
you again. If this is your intention, that's a perfect strategy. But soon you'll
find many more opportunities to carefully reveal the self-deceptions of your
friends and colleagues. The meta model is a very useful tool to help get
more information on their inner truths you can learn to spot through their
linguistic presuppositions. But be very, very careful. Nobody likes having
their inner fears tossed into their face. Nobody enjoys being told about their
weaknesses, especially if we claim it so obvious. When applying meta
model questions to revealed weaknesses by their presuppositions, be as
delicate as you can. It's much better to practice beforehand. The
combination of the meta model and your observation of their use of
linguistic presuppositions can allow you to create extremely deep
connections with people. You can help them peel back the onion layers until
they feel comfortable revealing things to you they may not even know
about themselves. With enough patience and skill, you can understand the
deep truth about nearly anybody you have a conversation with. However,
the deeper you go, the more careful and delicate you will need to be.

Post Journal Practice

Start first by noticing the presuppositions that others have said. At first,
these will only reveal some vague ideas beneath the surface that contract
something on the surface. Remember what they said exactly, and then write
it down later at home. Then apply a few meta model questions to that
statement. Look at question and try to imagine all the possible answers. If
this is a friend, imagine them asking you the same thing. Try to determine
the presuppositions embedded in the questions themselves. This will take a
lot of practice, but it's better to sort through the questions first, so you can
get familiar with them. Many of us have no idea the beliefs we hold, and
how much of those beliefs we are letting seep through our surface structure
language. Being put on the spot regarding those beliefs, especially in front
of others, is something that many would consider to be unforgivable.

Start by Asking Vague Questions

A good way to start is to simply ask, "What do you mean?" When you hear
a presupposition that indicates a deeper idea you want to explore. For
example, suppose you are looking at a group of people. And your friend
mentions casually:
They are getting worse.

This is a presupposition, namely a comparative. The term "getting worse"

implies they were bad before and they are going to be more bad in the
future. It doesn't describe what the comparative adjective is. It could mean
this is a negative judgment against them, which might reveal one thing.
They might not really have a conscious idea of the adjective that is getting
worse. They might have a conscious idea what that is, but they don't really
know why. If you make the wrong assumption, they might believe you are
judging them for being judgmental. Tread carefully. Suppose you ask,
"What do you mean?" and they answer:

Huh?

Go slowly. Ask again. Repeat what they said. Only mention the word or
phrase that represents the presupposition.

You said they are getting worse. What do you mean worse?

Oh, I don't know, louder, I guess.

So, now you know a little bit more information. From their perspective,
being loud is bad, so becoming louder is worse. Now you know, there are
plenty of paths to take from here. If they are a close friend, and you want to
be very careful and not put them on the spot, one technique is to fully
embrace their statement.

Yeah, I guess they are getting louder.

And then instead of asking them what that means, simply wonder out loud
yourself, and offer them the opportunity to offer more information.

Yeah, I guess they are getting louder, I wonder why?

And based on if or how they answer, you can continue further. As you can
likely guess, the application of meta model questions to linguistic
presuppositions is very much an art form. It takes quite a bit of practice.
The general principle is to make your question just strong enough for them
to answer. Asking "What do you mean?" as neutrally as possible is a good
start. Ask for further information about a phrase within their statement is a
good next step. But how they respond to that will tell you how to proceed.
They may be silent while shaking their head and turning their attention
elsewhere. This will tell you to drop the subject. They may shake their head
but continue to display signs of thinking about it. This will tell you they are
open for more questions. They make shake their head slowly, and look like
they are about to answer, but they aren't quite sure how. This indicates they
sort of know the answer, at least emotionally, but they aren't quite sure how
to word it. If you feel they are open to more discussion, but you aren't quite
sure how, give them a couple of options.

Either Or

A positive way to help lead deeper discussion without asking outright or

direct questions is to give them two choices. Two choices where one of
them has a good chance of being right. Most people don't have a lot of
answers beyond the words they put up on the surface. So, asking direct
questions, even to friends, may create feelings of anxiety. But when you can
do their thinking for them, and come up with options they can choose from,
this will help further the discussion, and deepen the connection. For
example, in the above example, if you asked:

What do you mean by worse?

And they look like they want to answer, but they aren't sure, how, you can
help by offering them binary categories. For example:

Like worse for them, or worse for somebody else?

Worse for them, I think.

Now you have a lot more information. Now you know when they think
about them "getting worse," they are thinking of them getting worse for
their own sake. This indicates the concern is not from being annoyed at
them but being worried for them. If they were concerned for them, and you
asked questions that presupposed they were annoyed at them, they would
resent the implication.

Go Slowly

This is just one brief example of how much information there is beneath the
surface. If you start by looking for presuppositions, and then practice asking
very simple questions to delve deeper, this can significantly enhance your
connections. On the other hand, if you find presuppositions in your
enemies, you can carefully ask meta model questions as means to more
easily destroy them later as you see fit.
Deadly Metaphors

So far, we've developed plenty of techniques that can be considered the

verbal equivalent of hand-to-hand combat. You hear an insult, and you flip
it around and back at them, leaving them stammering, unable to respond.
But sometimes somebody just gets under your skin. They are saying things
that aren't quite an insult, so you can't quite call them on it. Especially once
you start writing out the presuppositions from last chapter, you'll start to
notice some people you interact with are just downright creepy, or mean,
but not in a way that you can easily call them on it. And some of these
people are intuitively and naturally skilled with the Tommy DeVito
technique (What, am I a f..... clown?). This means tossing out some re-
frames or honest questions may backfire. Many people are very skilled at
insulting others, and then covering their tracks with ninja-level gaslighting.
If you start a verbal confrontation with one of these horror shows, you
might forever regret it. For that, we'll learn a new technique. A
metaphorical death ray to melt their brain. This will take some preparation.
This will be like the book of the dead, where you start to develop some
recon on your enemies. '

Step One

Collect a list of your enemies, like before. This can be the same list. All you
really need for this is a list of your enemies, and a situation in which you'd
like to give them the what-for but want to do so in a way that they don't
really know what's happening. For example, you might see a guy in the
lunch room who is a loud mouth, or who always talks down to other people
behind their back. This technique requires that you be in a conversation
with them.

Step Two

Find some obscure horror movies. The slasher types. The most horrific and
gruesome horror movies you can find. You don't need to watch them. Find
any website that has a collection of horror movie descriptions. Read
through a few of these descriptions until you find an evil character that
reminds you of your target. Collect as many of these descriptions possible,
that have the villain a close resemblance to your target.

Step Three

Practice reciting the plot, from the description, but make it sound as if you
watched it. Just to make sure nobody else recognized the movie, choose a
very obscure one. You don't need to remember the title, in fact remembering
the title is prohibited. All you need to do is remember the basic plot.

Step Four

This part is optional, but it's worthwhile considering. Come up with a

situation that your colleagues can't verify. Something that allegedly
happened to you, or something you do on a regular basis. A coffee shop you
visit. A bartender you know downtown. Any other situation where you can
refer to another person. This is to set up the story.

Step Five

Practice retelling the horror movie plot as if you heard about from that
mysterious friend. Just slide right in. "This guy told me about this creepy
movie where these kids were...." and then carry on with the plot. Make the
introduction (the friend who told you about the movie) very quick but make
the movie plot very lengthy and as disturbing as possible. Practice it until
you can tell it without needing to stop and remember. Create as many of
these one-two punches that you can. The one being the strange friend you
heard about the movie from. The two being the description of the creepy
movie itself.

Step Six

Deliver the one two punch. Wait until the target is going on about whatever
they go on about. Don't listen, don't bite on anything they are saying. As
soon as there is a lull in the conversation, lay them out with the one two
punch. When you are delivering part two, the actual movie plot, look
directly at your target. Be as descriptive as possible. Describe in detail how
the killer killed the victims, and make it sound like you very much enjoy
telling it.

Plausible Deniability

Since this is a story told to you (allegedly) by somebody else, you can
always claim brain fade. Whenever they ask you for specific information
(name of the movie, etc.) just say you don't know, you're only telling you
what some guy told you. Even if your target tries to claim you are a lover of
horror movies, you have plausible deniability. Claim you could never watch
such evil filth. You just were suddenly (somehow) reminded of that
secondhand story about a B horror movie that nobody else has ever heard
of. If you are extra brave, you can make up the plot yourself. If you are
going to do this, make the bad guy very much like your target, and have
him eaten alive by alligators or something. The main objective is that when
the target shows up and starts being himself, you can fight back by looking
directly at him and describing, in full detail, about guys kidnapping
hitchhikers and baking them into meat pies or something. Be sure to always
have a buffer between you and the story (the guy who told you about the
movie), so you can always claim plausible deniability. If anybody asks why
you were reminded of that just then, feign ignorance. "I don't know! It just
popped into my head! Isn't that weird!"

Always Remember the Intention

Unless somebody is dictating surgery or explaining a technical process over

the phone, nearly all human communication is related to the ancient
struggle of social status. When people talk behind people's back, or
gaslight, or use any other covertly underhanded language, they are doing it
from a point of weakness. People that generally feel a strong sense of social
status don't need to belittle others. If they do, then that only means they are
worried about their social status. So, in a sense, whenever somebody is
going on and on in a negative way, even covertly, they are essentially
subconsciously saying:

I'm important because others are dumb or weak or not worthy.

This is the ancient bully tactic. To make themselves feel good by putting
each other down. So, when you reply with the following:

Yeah? That reminds me of this horror story I heard about where this guy fed
his neighbors to his pet alligator and masturbated while he watched them
get eaten. Pretty creepy, right?

In a very covert and subconscious way, you are equating the bully with the
creepy villain in the horror movie. And so long as you can play it off as
some story told to you by some other guy, it will remain a subconscious to
subconscious message:

Dude, shut up, all right?

There is absolutely zero chance he (or she) is going to say:

Wait a minute! I think you're trying some subconscious trick to somehow

equate me with that horror villain because you think I'm somehow being
covertly mean to others. Yeah, I'm on to you!

All you'd have to say in this situation is:

Dude, what? I just thought of a story some weird guy told me. I don't even
remember what you were saying! What is it that makes you think I'm
equating you with a horror villain in a movie I've never seen? Seriously,
dude!

The truth is that very few people think much about what they say, or about
what other people say. And once you start to develop a conscious
understanding of deep emotions and surface structure language, you'll be
the super hero of any conversation.
Metaphorical Pacing

Using the horror story technique is a very powerful, very subtle and very
subconscious way to tell your enemies to take a hike. It comes with
complete plausible deniability. As such, however, it is a very blunt force
weapon. Like a gigantic invisible club, you can whack them upside the
head. It is so blunt, they will only get the vague message of not being
around you. With some practice, you can use this technique to more
delicately shape their behavior. This is a very powerful technique, but in
order to use it effectively you'll need a lot of practice. Consider this chapter
more of an overview of what is possible, rather than a step by step
explanation.

Metaphors

Human speak largely in metaphors. George Lakoff, a student of Noam

Chomsky, described how we used intangible nouns as if they were real
objects. For example, if you said you were "in a meeting," the word,
"meeting," is an intangible noun. The chairs, the people, the coffee
machine, the projector, the table, those are all tangible nouns. But the
meeting is only an idea. A temporary shared hallucination. A label of an
imaginary "thing" you are sharing in that room. If the scheduled meeting is
from 3 to 4, where is the meeting at 2:59? Where is the meeting at 4:01?
Before the meeting, it, as a noun, is a plan in the minds of the attendees.
After the meeting, it only exists as memory in the minds of the attendees.
According to Lakoff, whenever we use these intangible nouns, we must use
them as if they are real things. His theory is that we can tell what kind of
things they are by the prepositions (not presupposition). The words we use
before (pre-position) the noun. We say we are in a meeting. This is a clue
that we think of a meeting as a thing we are inside of, or a container.
Another example is we are on the train, or on the plane, or on the bus. Why
would we say on, when we are clearly inside of these things? Perhaps
because we think of all vehicles as things we ride on. Perhaps the ancient
linguistic programming in our brain hasn't caught up to modern
transportation. Perhaps our ancient brains feel like we are still riding around
on horses. But why do we say we are in our cars? Perhaps because our car
is like a home away from home. A very personal space. Maybe even more
personal than our homes, when there is always somebody listening to what
we are doing. Several YouTube personalities film many videos from their
cars for this reason. Our cars can be moved to private and more quiet
locations. When we are at home, we are pretty much stuck.

Deeper Metaphors

We've been telling each other stories since the dawn of time. One reason
(out of too many to count) we may enjoy stories is they serve as useful
devices to apply post hypnotic suggestions. When we think of post hypnotic
suggestions, we tend to think of goofy movies where the character is given
a post hypnotic suggestion to scream "Banana!" every time somebody says
their name. But consider this idea. Several young cave kids hear stories
about courageous heroes who must fight evil monsters. They hear this
hero's journey story in many forms as they grow up. When they are finally
old enough to go hunting, they have effectively been programmed by these
stories to see themselves as the heroes and see their prey as the monsters
they must slay in order to save their friends. If this gives them enough
courage to successfully hunt and get enough necessary food for their tribal
members, then the story has served its purpose. It has effectively implanted
a post hypnotic suggestion that says, "When you see a huge animal, you
will feel courage instead of fear."

Cautionary Tales

Many of the stories we enjoy are cautionary tales. Aesop wrote many just
for this purpose. Slow and steady wins the race. Save up for winter or
you're going to die. If you have a steady income stream, don't mess it up by
getting greedy. All these simple messages were told in simple stories. If you
have an enemy, consider the same strategy.

How to Create

First, you'll need to figure out what specific advice or warning you'd like to
deliver. Perhaps you'd like to tell them to stop bothering you while you're
working. Maybe they like to hang around your desk telling silly jokes and
wasting time. You'd like to tell them to buzz off, but maybe they are your
boss, or they are close friends with your boss, so you are wary of blowback.
You might think about a short story that illustrates this. If you keep
bothering me, something very bad is going to happen. Ideally, you want to
be very careful that you have real plausible deniability. A problem with
delivering metaphors that are designed to "teach them a lesson," is if they
too transparent, they will backfire. One way to do this is to find an actual
movie where a real character had something bad happen to them because
they were doing something that your enemy is doing. It doesn't need to be a
work-related situation. For example, you might find a movie where a nice
guy kept asking out his attractive neighbor. She kept turning him down, but
he kept asking. Then one day her boyfriend got out of prison and nobody
saw the nice guy neighbor ever again. To be sure they don't see consciously
what you're up to, the story would have to be delivered away from the
actual behavior. When you are out to lunch, or on break.

Metaphorical Magic

You'll find carefully constructed metaphors a fantastic way to deliver

messages to people when conscious messages aren't the best choice. Advice
to friends, warnings to enemies and everything in between.

Keep A Metaphor Journal

Once you start to calibrate your brain to think in metaphors, you'll find
them everywhere. Any time you have something you'd like to say to
somebody, get it down into the simplest form possible. In the above
example, that would be:

If you keep bothering me something bad is going to happen.

Then write down any examples you can think of or examples that you see in
fiction where that actually happens. Pretty soon you'll have some very
common things on both ends. You'll start to notice some common things
you'll want to say to people, common pieces of advice or warnings, and for
each of these, you'll have a lot of quick metaphorical ways to say them.
This will be a constant work in progress, and once you start to practice
speaking and thinking in metaphors, you will have discovered a wonderful
new world of covert communication.
Final Words

Language can be your greatest tool if you want it to be. It can be a source of
consistent improvement and growth. A process of deep connection with
others. A weapon to be wielded with deadly force. A window into the soul
of all those close to you. A delicate technique to help those closest to you.
A careful process to help people find and share their deepest secrets. Or it
can be nothing but mumbled sounds to express half-finished thoughts. Most
people have ill-conceived thoughts they express with poorly chosen words.
Most people think the same thoughts over and over, and they use the same
phrases and sentences to describe these same thoughts. Most of our ideas
and speaking styles we pick up from fictional characters or talking heads on
TV. To study the words you use is to examine the structure of your
thoughts. To study the words used by others is to see their thoughts more
clearly than they can themselves. To create a daily practice to enhance and
improve the words you use is to enhance and improve the thoughts you
think every day.

Everything Is Opinion

Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor. He also

wrote "Meditations," a collection of essays. In it, he echoed the thoughts of
Socrates, in that everything is opinion. Everything you hear anybody else
say, unless they are a professor giving a lecture in the sciences, or stating a
previously agreed upon definition, is an opinion. It is not fact. It is an
opinion about what somebody thinks is true about something. An opinion
about what somebody wants to be true about something, or what they want
you to think is true about something. Read this next sentence very carefully:
With the tools in this guide, and consistent practice, you can develop the
verbal skills to absolutely obliterate any opinion you hear from any person
you hear it from. It doesn't matter if that opinion comes from your idiot
neighbor, your boss, or the Pope himself. With enough patience and delicate
questioning, you can prove false anything anybody ever says to you. Now,
be very careful with this power. Remember that Socrates was put to death
because those in power didn't like the idea of him teaching these skills to
his students. They very much wanted to keep alive the idea that they had
power because of logical and just reasons. By taking the time to develop
these skills, you can make great friends, you can do great things, but you
can also create deadly enemies that will love nothing more than to see your
destruction. Know your friends from your enemies. Keep your enemies
close, so you can slowly elicit all their weak points and soft spots. The more
you know how to destroy them, the more you are confident you can destroy
the more you'll be able to put up with their idiotic nonsense. Always
remember that plenty of people practice martial arts because they never
want to have to use it. The more they know, they more they feel confident
in their safety without ever needing violence. Treat some of these patterns
the same way. When it comes to your enemies, speak softly, but always be
ready to lower the boom. When it comes to everything else, these skills will
allow you to have a lot of fun. You can obliterate your own limiting beliefs
and those of your friends. You can be a riot at parties. You can discover the
secrets of humor and a quick wit. But only if you practice. Not just a little
bit, but consistently.

Choose One Thing to Start

Many people try to get into shape, only to crash and burn. The reason is
very simple and very common. They have huge motivation. They start with
a lot of expectations. But then the motivation wanes, and they give up. We
strongly recommend you do the opposite. Start as slowly as you can. Start
by writing something in a journal every day. Write something somebody
said that you didn't know how to respond to. Practice pausing, getting into a
neutral state, and asking plainly, "I don't understand. What do you mean?"
Keep doing that until you can do it in real time.

Read and Re-read

There are many, many ideas in here. To master them all will take a lifetime.
Consider doing the state building exercises once you establish a habit of
daily journaling. Find some positive memories of confidence and
assertiveness and bring them back to the forefront of your mind.

Wait Until You Feel Behind

Many people tend to rush out ahead of themselves. They feel they need to
lose ten pounds by next weekend. This leaves them feeling a need to push
themselves. This requires a daily dose of motivation. Unfortunately,
motivation is hard to create. Motivation is hard to sustain. Instead, consider
waiting until you feel compelled. Wait until you feel an internal force
pulling you toward something. Write something in your journal, and then
think about it. Keep writing every day until you automatically find yourself
asking, "What do you mean?"

What Can I Do Tomorrow?

Once you get into the habit of simply writing down statements and
practicing replying, begin to write down ideas that you could try the next
day. Things you could say to people. Silly meta model questions you could
ask of people. It doesn't matter if you follow through. As soon as you start
thinking and writing about things you could do, you eventually will. Let the
seed of discovery grow on its own. Once it sprouts in your brain, you'll
never look back.

Search and Destroy

Eventually you'll get to a place where you are actively looking for
statements to disprove. When you know that you can shut down any insults
or comments. Be careful! Practice them in mind first, before you say
anything. But give yourself a treat now and then. Wait until some goof in
line behind you says something, and then turn around and let him have it.
Remember Sun Tzu's advice and start softly. Act meek, ask for enough
information and then shut them down. Enjoy shutting them down. Shut
them down with a gleam in your eye and a smile on your face.

Uplift and Empower

Similarly, find opportunities to drop in presuppositions that imply people

are much stronger than they think they are. That their future is much
brighter than they think they are. That the world is much friendlier than it
appears to be. Carefully peel back the onion layers of those close to you and
validate their deep and true selves.
Linguistic Super Hero

With practice, you'll have a powerful set of skills that few people know
exist. With a word you can uplift or destroy. Take time to develop these
skills and take care to use them well. Make the world happier because you
are in it. Make the world better because you are in it. Make the world laugh
louder because you are in it. Speak your truth, and help others find and
speak theirs. And with extreme prejudice destroy every enemy who dares to
step in your path.
Contact

Web: mindpersuasion.com

Forum: mindpersuasion.net

Email: support@mindpersuasion.com
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