I've said it before, and I'll say it many times: Persuasion is first and foremost the study of human nature. And despite the things that are understandable about human nature, we are still very intricate and complex creatures. If all things were equal, there would still be some people who excel and others who get stuck.

Are you in a holding pattern? Maybe you've felt unable to escape a complacent state in terms of your sales numbers or some other aspect of your life. The first step is to begin the process of change.

Sometimes the idea of pushing past the blockages is overwhelming in itself. Thinking so far ahead as to the end goal can be enough to exhaust. Taking things one day at a time is really valuable despite it's cliched over usage. Beginning at the beginning and taking the first step, leads to the next step and the next, and before you know it, you've made progress!

"If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed." I love this quote by David Viscott. And you have the courage to begin. I know this, because you're already reading this article about changing. You've begun the internal shift from a complacent state to a new way.

My focus in persuasion has become looking to persuade our affluent clientle. I had been teaching persuasion broadly, and decided to change the way I was doing it to work with people looking to specifically persuade the affluent. After all, that's where the money is.

My feeling is that we must first persuade ourselves and understand what makes us do the things we do, and from there, we can persuade others. We're our own guinea pigs. And the positive changes this has made in the lives of my students (not to mention in my own life) are phenomenal.

Some of the ways we persuade ourselves include: mapping out our personal, business and public universes in order to learn to manifest what we want, investigating our relationships with intention to set ourselves up to get predictable results of success every single time we put our minds to it. We work on clearing out our other than conscious minds by eliminating distractions and resentments and other clutter that holds us back. We also learn how to communicate with our other than conscious to aid us in everything we do. And we use an unbelievably revolutionary technique to tap out emotional resistance in ourselves which I credit for being one of the top three triggers in the shedding of 140 pounds of extra weight I had been carrying for years.

Are you ready for change? It's simple, but not easy to do. Start by looking around at some of the other articles I've written as described above. There are definitely some excellent small steps, little acorns of potential change, in these. And if you find yourself wanting more, check out maxpersuasion.com.

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