4. Belief as a Meta-Condition: Paradigm and Brand
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When you encounter someone they come towards you from a particular angle, that of the beliefs they already have. Start by figuring out that angle; ask questions that reveal their worldview. Now enter their movement, agree with their reality. In NLP terms, you are pacing them. Throw them off balance by finding a confusion or contradiction in their beliefs. Ask them questions that lead to further questions. When they are confused about what they believe their reality is most malleable. From here you spot a solution for their confusion, what you want them to do. Ask them to imagine doing what you want and it solving their confusion. Offer to let them do what you want. Let them go on their new vector, much like the old but adjusted in your favor30.
Meet every situation that arises at the intensity with which it arrives, while leveraging the situation in a favorable direction. In aikido, irimi isn't exactly head-on but ever so slightly askew, a way to meet an attack, and was originally a term used in hand-to-hand which has expanded to the field of conflict studies. In applying these ideas on an individual level, you must first understand your position within a larger social cluster, figure out where your strongest incoming signals are originating, and begin modeling, sketching out, mind-mapping, or otherwise diagramming your position. Just being aware of your social network in real life, and via virtual extensions, will prime you to see opportunities, both for yourself and for the people you know. Actively connecting people or nodes together to more densely mesh the network can result in increased pattern integrity, which improves the quality of feedback. It is possible that the route your information takes through a network may seem contrary to your goal but your actions will only bring you closer to your goals if they are compatible with the motion of the ecology of the network.
Construction of feedback loops31 of the right signal intensity can achieve any socially desirable effect for any individual node; it's just a matter of engineering.
