Learning How the Mind Works Can Work For You

By Kenneth L. Johnson


It's always a good idea to have an idea of how the mind works so you can adjust your sales copy accordingly to appeal to certain mind sectors. Let's just start with some basic information so you get a good idea of how the mind works.The brain does two major things - stores information in your memory and processes information that allows you to use/apply your knowledge to make decisions and solve problems. Next we'll look at what side of the brain does what.

Those words can still apply today. It depends on the internal representation that we have of the world in which we live. There is an objective reality but we cannot see it. All that we can grasp is our own perception of that reality and that perception differs with each individual.

Your right brain works with emotions, pictures, wholes and how all the parts all relate together, putting stuff together (that AH-HA moment), and simultaneous/holistic thinking. This side of the brain doesn't wear a watch like the left side does, and in fact can lose track of time. And like the left side of your brain, the right side governs/runs the left side of your body.

That personal bank of references is composed of an amalgamate of all the experiences that we've had in the past. It's a composite of the deductions that we unconsciously reached following every new experience that we've had.Some of these deductions may be quite accurate while others might be so fanciful as to make the angels cry. Yet, it is from that bank of reference and all those past conclusions that we view our world and everything in it.

For hundreds of years the field of psychology tried to find a way to change emotions and behavior. The methods devised made great theories, but never really resulted in much change. Some of the theories made a lot of sense, but practice didn't seem to yield any results. The advocates of different psychological theories over the past hundred years spent more time arguing over theories than trying to find something that really worked. It took up until the late 1970s before a model that was actually useful and practical was devised.

We talked a little about mental patterns earlier in this book and about Neuro Linguistic Programming. Mental patterns simply refer to memories formed in your brain to record your experiences as you see, hear, feel, smell, sense or taste them. The more often you do this your brain builds a pattern of it - a familiar pattern.When you experience a situation again, or something similar, the memory is activated and you go on autopilot. So you can see if you did an email campaign to blend with your website copy and all the other areas we have outlined where you can use keywords and phrases, the more people see it (the site or email or etc.) the more familiar you become. This goes right straight back to relationship marketing. Nice tie in isn't it?

OK now you have a pretty fair idea of how the mind works. Let's go just one more step further. You already know about the language of the brain being pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes, and smells - in other words input from your senses that is your imagination when it is processed. Your brain can only work with positive information that it receives from your five senses. Your brain can't work with inputs you haven't experienced or otherwise called negative information.Here is a very important point to remember when thinking about your customers. They can't reflect and act at the same time. They need to be focused on one thing or another (reading your website copy, email etc) and thinking about it or taking action and buying something. Trick is to be able to switch them from one to the other quickly and effortlessly. Good thing you know about Neuro Linguistic Programming and how the mind works.

After the objective reality has finished being distorted by our previous references and our fundamental beliefs it has to contend with the ubiquitous mediatic barrage, most of which is taken at face value. What shreds of truth could maintain its integrity once it has been through all these distortions? No wonder that most of us are walking contradictions.

And here is why you want to know what they do for a living. A manager would be a left brain person (appeal to his/her logic and love of analysis). A leader would be right brain (appeal to his/her emotions and imagination). A producer - that would depend on the kind of work done. If the work done is verbal, logical, and analytical - that is left brain. If the work is intuitive, emotional, and creative - that is right brain. Can you be a combination? Yes, but usually one is more predominant that the other.




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