how to speak so that people want to listen

I was an English tutor for 3 years which basically means I was a professional conversationalist and it was my job to keep the conversation flowing while I help my student in front of me achieve fluency and yeah news flash guess what I realized throughout my 3 years of experience most people are very boring to listen to whoa that might have shocked you you might be thinking Louis how dare you say such a thing it's the truth most people are boring to listen to even when they're paying me for it but I don't want you to

be boring to listen to so there are four things we're going to cover within the next few minutes of your time to make sure that people want to listen to you and that you speak with power and confidence number one ditch the hedges there is one language Hack That famous judges lawyers and influencers use to keep you hooked on their every word and it is very simply this they speak in absolutes Hedges are words we use such as Maybe Might perhaps likely unlikely probably and you know what all of these words do they transfer uncertainty

the reason we get hooked onto every word that a charismatic influencer says is because they speak with confidence and exaggeration whether you like it or not us humans prefer people who give us certainty than uncertainty unless you're playing weird Love Games if you speak with certainty it's harder for people to believe that you're wrong which in its worst form is why Charisma traps us into following people even when they're not competent think about these two sentences it might rain tomorrow it will definitely rain tomorrow this one transfers uncertainty thanks John for telling me it might

rain tomorrow does that mean I need to take an umbrella with me to work or not number two it will definitely rain tomorrow oh thanks Peter now I know I definitely need to take an umbrella with me to work Hedges undermine your ability to influence the people you want to influence because why would you follow anyone who gives you uncertainty when you hedge not to be confused with Edge you undermine what you're saying and the one way you can steer clear of hedging is don't turn your statements into questions let me introduce you to two

of my friends don't laugh this took me 4 hours to draw this is John and this is Sarah they are a newly formed couple and they're walking down the strip at night deciding where to eat at a restaurant they would look at one place and John says we should eat here I think first part transform certainty great good good job John you're probably in our good books but then the second part just undermines everything he's just said we should eat here I think suddenly Sarah Sarah or Sally Sarah is a bit disgruntled at the fact

that she was given certainty only for it to be undercut by this band's ambivalence towards his decisions which one sounds better this will work I think this will work speak in absolutes if you want people to listen to your every word however I know some of your alarm bells are going off and you're thinking leis we speak a lot about being open-minded on this channel why would you want to speak in absolutes all of the time when life is very uncertain well for your chy buggers wait a little bit because point 4 counteracts this but

for all my philosophical machos out there just pay attention to this principle strong opinions held Loosely number two don't hesitate paa this isn't a dig at you we all use these words some people more than others ah um uh and the worst of all like I remember I was on a train once coming back from London to my hometown and there were three Australian girls in front of me sat at a table Lively talking about their life and one of the girls sparked up a conversation about a boy she is currently dating and I was

sat there listening to my music but as the Curious chap I am I unplugged my earphones just to listen to their conversation and what started off as a great exploration into the inner workings of a woman's mind about a guy she currently dating suddenly turned into a very annoying Journey because this woman used the word like at the end of every sentence I just don't know like he's he's nice like he he treats me well like and I just like you know like when you get that feeling with someone and you know what I sat

back in my chair and I visualized something I visualized myself standing up walking over to the table and doing something like this excuse me girls you're all right you're all right love yep all good thank you just been listening to your conversation yeah fascinating stuff sounds like a great guy but uh do you know what happens if you close your mouth yeah you improve the quality of my train experience by 70% stop using these words as much as you possibly can because what it transfers is uncertainty again noticing a theme here and not only that

but these things weaken what we're saying and in fact these hesitations are more detrimental than Hedges the things we covered in point. one there was an interesting study done where there was a group of UN University students sitting in their lecture hall and researchers set up this experiment where multiple different lecturers would come in and lecture but what the researchers did is they informed the students beforehand about the status of the current lecturer for example whether this was a professor who had been at the University for many years or a student just starting out or

a firsttime lecturer and obviously when the students were told that this professor currently lecturing was of higher status they perceived them as higher status but interestingly enough when the higher status individuals used more Hedges throughout their presentation the students then reported perceiving this person as lower status and conversely the lower status lecturers such as the fellow students or beginning professors who used less hesitations were then perceived as higher status so the point is it doesn't matter how much Social Status you currently have at your workplace or in your friendship group or with the people you

want to impress if you use less hesitations you'll be perceived as higher status the key theme throughout these first two points is essentially replace uncertain words with powerful convictions and what you replace your hesitations with I hear you ask is a pause because this also helps you gather your thoughts and the people who are listening to you gather their thoughts as well here's a quick clip from Vin Jang a Communications expert demonstrating this in further the detail um so through Medical School I've always wanted to be a physician so you know I'm looking after your

heart lungs um and you know I just went to the wards um and you're filling a lot of the Silence with the ums AR and a so so filler words are something I want you to pay attention to now I want some slower rates of speech and some pauses no s ARS or arms and very conscious of replacing the arms and the ARs and the so with silence I went into Medical School thinking that I've always wanted to just help Humanity save lives do big changes little did I know that it's not all about saving

lives in that life and death it's about changing quality of life big round of applause that was amaz you back ready for point three yeah right point three turn pasts into presents a lot of the time when we are describing something we use adjectives adverbs and nouns for example you might say it's interesting or amazing but there is one psychological hack you can use with your descriptions of things which will give you a better chance at persuading whoever you want to persuade to do a certain thing and what you do is you change the tense

of the verbs for the things that you're describing for example the author of the book man words Jonah Berger researched thousands of customer reviews online and what he found was fascinating with product reviews for things such as books on Amazon the reviews that used the present tense were found more helpful by other customers and they sparked these customers to buy the book itself this was exactly the same for music reviews as well and what this looks like in a sentence is the book was good no that's past tense the book is good yes cuz that's

present tense because the key to understanding why this helps us when we're trying to persuade someone of something is the key at what these two tenses hint at think about it if I say the book was good what this indicates is it's a subjective assessment and the effect is temporary there's no guarantee whether the book will continue being good if it was good what the book is good hints at is potential objectivity and that this thing will provide this result again when you adopt evaluations of things in the present tense this diet is good it

really helps the book was awesome the movie is great what you are signifying as the speaker is that you have the confidence to make an objective truth about this thing that will continue to be true so your speech comes across as more persuasive and convincing the diet helps if you're in the context of presenting an idea to someone if you're referring to data for example you previously collected then say the research finds rather than the research found because remember this implies transience this implies continued results finally Point number four and this is counteracting the potential

flaws in our first point which was ditch the hedges of course we know we cannot speak with certainty all of the time because we are fallible creatures and there are some things we just don't know so you must understand when to express doubt in order to soften other people up so your arguments become more convincing think about it and don't laugh this took me 5 hours to draw when you have a family gathering and you're suddenly stuck in a conversation with that one family member or friend who you just completely disagree with what usually contributes

to your arguments descending into a pit of chaos rather than actually forming into a civil discussion is one psychological truth we don't see facts the same way in the context of Two Cousins Billy and Jessica Billy has returned home for Thanksgiving and suddenly finds himself in a conversation with his cousin about veganism to which he's trying to convince Jessica veganism doesn't work and she stood there in conviction saying yes it does Billy has adopted the mindset that facts will be enough to change Jessica's mindset but remember we don't see facts the same way if we

did we would all always agree however think about Pedro and Julie they've returned home for their family gathering and when they get into their discussions which they usually disagree about Pedro has before read a book about communication and has started to use this sentence whenever he enters conversations which could descend into argumentative chaos he says I could be wrong but and suddenly what was her name Pedro and Julie Julie is now softened to hear what Pedro has to say life changing whenever you are about to State an opinion or a perspective that you are unsure

of use the sentence I could be wrong but if you want to stand the best chance at persuading this other person of your arguments because what this does is it softens people up by making the understanding implicit within the interaction that ideas are complicated and different perspectives are tolerated so don't fall into the Trap of digging your heels in and trying trying to convince other people of your arguments because there is a psychological term called reactants which refers to the psychological phenomenon of that internal trigger going off in your mind when you feel someone is

trying to persuade you of something you actively want to dig your heels in and prove them wrong or do the opposite of what they're trying to tell you so by expressing doubts at the right time we gift ourselves social Lube where other people become softer quick scientific example of this is you could say studies suggest rather than studies show so in summary to utilize your confident language ditch the hedges by speaking in absolutes at the right time don't hesitate by using um like and number three turn pasts into presents when you're trying to describe something

and number four know when to express doubt by saying I could be wrong but hopefully my drawing has improved and you know the deal stay disa playful and dangerous adios muchos