J D Fuentes - Gut Impact | Page 9

this to a stereotype, and imagine we’ve an emotional
patient working with a calm, even-handed, neutral therapist:

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Patient (emotionally): I’m unhappy.
Therapist (calmly): You’re unhappy.
P: I’m frustrated.
T: You feel frustrated.
P: I just wish my life was different.
T: You just wish your life was different.
P: You’re just repeating everything I say.
T: You feel I’m just repeating everything you say.
P: And?
T: Yes?
P: I’m unhappy.
The above is a parody, of course: one hopes no clinician would
actually be so clumsy. It’s clumsy for several reasons, a couple of which
are obvious and explicit: Having matched the patient, the therapist
doesn’t lead the patient anywhere—to some state other than being
unhappy (“happiness”, for example). Also, the therapist makes one
matching statement, and stops; no emotional momentum is built, and
therefore no emotional receptivity is created. Finally, the therapist’s
calm, neutral manner can itself be a problem: While a neutral manner can
be useful in information-gathering, particularly in asking questions about
factual matters, it’s counter-productive when you want to stir someone’s
emotions, and particularly when you want to change someone’s
emotions.
The same principles hold in less artificial situations. In order to
get someone’s emotions and instincts engaged and on your side, you
should Match that person’s emotions. This doesn’t just mean saying what
they feel—it also means you should exhibit the emotion you’re
describing. When, in the example above, the therapist says, calmly,
“You feel frustrated,” he’s saying several things:
You feel frustrated.
I don’t feel frustrated.
I don’t share your feelings.
I don’t understand your experience.
I’m not someone you should open up to.
I am someone you cannot learn from.
On the other hand, were the therapist to launch into a loose and
very general, but also very emotional description of a time he/she felt
frustrated, or a time someone else felt frustrated, acting out frustration as

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he/she describes the experience, the therapist would be saying the
following things.
I am like you.
I am on your side.
I understand your experience.
I am someone you should open up to.
I am someone you can learn from.
To really have an impact on another person, you must engage
that person’s Gut. To engage the Gut, you must a) Match that person’s
experience and b) make sure your various communicative outputs are
synchronized together, so that what you say is intensified by how you say
it.
SHORTCUTS TO INTERNAL ALIGNMENT
Following are some shortcuts to Internal Alignment.
To make generating an intense response easier, try the
following:
a. Generally, when you are describing an emotional state,
demonstrate that state. If you are talking about being reserved or
guarded, lean back, fold your arms, drain your voice of energy;
if you are talking about being excited, lean forward, expose your
chest, let your voice sound full and let it move through high and
low pitch ranges.
b. When you want to create suspense, or to suggest that you are
uncertain or having mixed feelings about what you are saying,
make your vocal pitch go up. After your pitch goes up, your
listener will instinctively expect your pitch to fall; if it does not,
it will sow doubt in your listener's mind.
c. When you want to get your listener to do what you say, or
believe what you say, or experience something intensely, make
your vocal pitch go down. At the end of a statement, make sure
your pitch descends.
d. Gesture, rather than keeping your hands and arms immobile
or close to your body; gesture when delivering the most

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important words in a given phrase, timing the gestures so that
each lasts as long as the accompanying word.
e. Slow your rate of speech--your tempo--to intensify your
words' impact; the slower your tempo, the greater your impact.
f. When describing something abstract or conceptual,
occasionally defocus your eyes and look up, as people do when
they are thinking of something. This suggests an intense
involvement in your own thoughts, which, odd as it seems,
extends to your listener an invitation to experience with equal
intensity the state you are describing.
When describing an emotional or tactile experience, slow your
speech down, nod your head down slightly, and momentarily
look downward as you speak.
g. After describing an intense state, push your fingers through
your hair.
h. The more physical space your gestures occupy, the more
confident you seem. The further from your body you gesture,
and the more space you place between your arms and your
chest, the more confident and powerful you seem. Don’t worry
about seeming grandiose; with practice, your expansive gestures
will become ever more closely synchronized with what you
want to express, and therefore, more and more persuasive.
Ultimately, you should think of your body, as well as the space around
your body, as a whole, a unit. This unit should be completely aligned,
completely involved in the expression of a particular emotion. Your
body is a tool—you should allow yourself to let the emotions you choose
dictate the movement, stillness, and variation of this tool’s every part.
Every part of you that does not reinforce your verbal message
dampens and deadens that message.
We call these nonlogical, nonverbal distinctions nuances.
Charisma, energy, and magnetism are associated with rich nonverbal
nuance, as is risk-taking. If you want to avoid notice, avoid nuance; if

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you