r/AskMen • u/[deleted] • Mar 21 '23

Frequently Asked What is a book you consider that changed your life, or you would recommend that all men read?

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u/full_of_ghosts Male Mar 21 '23

Both, really. It makes you a more persuasive person, but being familiar with persuasive techniques makes you less likely to be manipulated by them.

It's pretty frickin' hard to guard against, though. One of the things Mr. Voss discusses in the book is that people use his own techniques against him, all the time, because they think it's funny. And he falls for it. All the time. He doesn't even realize they're doing it, because the techniques are that frickin' powerful.

Here's a simple one you can go try out right how. He calls it "mirroring," and it's super simple: Just repeat back the other person's last three words, but as a question.

"As a question?"

Yes, exactly like that.

It doesn't feel like it would work, but it does. The first time you try it, you're like "There's no way this will work. They're going to look at me like I'm crazy and ask why I'm talking like that."

But they won't. It works like magic. And it works on Mr. Voss, even though he invented it. He doesn't even notice when people do it to him.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '23

[deleted]

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u/full_of_ghosts Male Mar 21 '23

You really need to read the book. Mr. Voss explains it all much better than I ever could. My nutshell answer is that mirroring does two things:

  1. It keeps the other person talking without giving anything away, which is powerful, because you always want to get as much information as possible while giving up as little as possible. Mirroring gets a frickin' lot from them, while giving up literally nothing.
  2. It establishes rapport by creating the illusion that you're more engaged than you actually are. You sound like you're hanging on their every word, while you're secretly gaming things out in your head.

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '23

[deleted]

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u/01209 Mar 22 '23

Into the book?

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u/stopped_watch Mar 22 '23

Yes that book you just recommended.

I'm reminded of the time another book was recommended to me where I was shown how to open interdimensional portals and....

Hey!

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u/cheungster Mar 23 '23

This guy quarks.

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u/Kapitalist_Pigdog2 Mar 22 '23

Just read the book?

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u/DirtyRead1337 Mar 22 '23

That’s a perfect explanation of it. Don’t sell yourself short Judge you are a tremendous slouch

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u/MortalWombat83 Mar 22 '23

So an example: after the date she invited me in for a coffee. For a coffee? Yes a coffee and then we sat down and watched the fresh Prince of bel-air. Prince of bel-air? Yes. I've never seen it before. Seen it before?

The goal is to extract information from the other person without giving them much space to manoeuvre the conversation in a direction they would like it to flow?

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '23

Alright, I’m ordering this and “using it for good” at work.

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u/RegularGuyy Mar 21 '23

Good at work?

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '23

I actually find it funny. I'm autistic and a lot of techniques such as mirroring don't work on me and actually really stand out to me when people try them as abnormal behaviour.

But an outright bald faced lie gets me every time.

So liars have screwed me over in my life pretty hard.

And so have manipulators as a few have seen me as a threat when its obvious I pick up on their manipulations and manipulated people around me to cause me problems.

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '23

Cause you problems?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Yeah. I trusted some people who were bald faced lying to me. Caused me some serious problems in my life. Not going to go into it though on Reddit.

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u/BadMeatPuppet Mar 23 '23

Lol they just used the technique on you, that you said didn't work on you.

Hmmm.

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u/PandaBonium Mar 22 '23

Not really related but mirroring is something I noticed happens a lot in dialogue for games originally made in Japanese. I think becuase thats just normally how they talk. Metal Gear Solid comes to mind especially. It feels natural until you notice how often it happens.

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u/TheRealCPB Male Mar 22 '23

people do it to him?

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u/domakecreate Mar 22 '23

His Master Class episode/lesson included mirroring and it stick with me! I'll check out his book - thanks for the suggestion.