Posted on 13 Jun, 2008 -
I know Derren Brown’s Secrets!
Here’s how to ‘persuade’ those around you to do what you want them to…
How to make others feel fantastic…
And defend yourself when in danger…
All thanks to Derren Brown’s secrets!
My husband is way more impressed with Derren Brown than I am. I can’t watch it without thinking “well that can’t be true”, while he sits there smirking and saying “that’s brilliant!”.
That said, when I saw his book for sale on Amazon last week, I thought what a great idea and bit of fun it would be to buy it and pass on some of his tips to you. The review had said that he really does give away some great secrets as well as some tips that can be useful in your everyday life.
So here, with no further delay, are six little Derren Brown gems that I thought you might appreciate:
1. How to remember people’s names as soon as you’re introduced to them
I’ve always had a difficulty with this one - although the main problem is not really listening to the name when it’s said but instead letting it pass straight through me. The first thing to remember, therefore, is to really pay attention to the name you hear and make the decision that you want to remember it.
The next trick that Derren gives is to immediately think of another person who has the same name as this new person. It could be somebody famous, somebody you knew at school or someone you known now. Now imagine that this new person stood in front of you has been made up to look like the person you know already. I have tried this twice myself already and it worked brilliantly.
It can be very flattering when somebody you’ve only just met remembers your name so this is a nice compliment to pay to others not to mention very useful. I am, however, a bit concerned that I will now always associate the nice person I met at the weekend with a bit of a monster of another woman!
2. How to hypnotise people or make them ripe for suggestion
The big trick here is to connect new suggestions or hidden instructions with activities that the person is already doing. The example Derren gives is:
“As you sit there and listen to my words, with your eyes closed, feeling your hands there on the arm of the chair, allowing my words to relax you as your breathing becomes regular and peaceful, I’d like your to let yourself drift away into a kind of sleep.”
It is far more effective to say ‘As you X, so you Y’ than just ‘Please Y’. Start with what the person is currently doing and then subtly suggest that they do something else. I haven’t tried this out on anyone myself yet, but I have just remembered how the magician at a children’s party used it to get every child in the room to walk obediently to the toilets and wash their hands after they’d each had a go at stroking a rabbit. My friend also told me yesterday that her husband couldn’t get past this stage of Derren’s book because he kept falling asleep while reading it!!
3. How to make those you love feel good about themselves
This is a little idea that Derren says in a footnote but I really like it. First of all, find out how those you are close to would like to be remembered when they’re gone. “They’ll give you a wonderful insight into how they want to be understood, and you’ll win their hearts when, months later, you come out with exactly the right choice of words to express your admiration of them. There’s no reason why this should be insincere, its’ just a way of making sure that your sincerity has a real effect.”
4. Change how you feel about something you have to do
First of all, think of an experience that makes you feel great. Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of that activity. After you’ve done that, review what it was that was going through your mind. Probably it was a short ‘film’. Nice and big up on your ‘screen’ in vivid colours.
On the other hand, when there is something you need to do but can’t motivate yourself to do, you probably aren’t even picturing yourself actually doing it at all. The trick here is to imagine yourself doing the task in the vivid movie style that you’ve just used to imagine doing something you love. It will actually trick your mind into doing that thing you’ve been shying away from. You could also use this trick for when you need to meet new people or talk infront of a crowd. Visualise yourself doing it happily and confidently in big technicolour.
5. CONFUSE opponents into agreement or surrender
Derren suggests this method of confusing your opponent mainly as a measure for self defence but it can also be applied to other areas of your life.
The example he gives is that if, for example, you are approached by an aggressive drunk who challenges you with a typical ‘What are you looking at?’, you can take the control out of his hands by confusing him. Start talking in a friendly manner about something totally different and confusing or eccentric. The example he gives is when he pacified a drunk himself one night by saying “The wall outside my house isn’t four foot high. But I lived in Spain for a bit and you should see the walls there - enormous, right up here!” and then proceeded to point out how small the walls were around them.
The state of bewilderment, apparently, makes people highly suggestible. “The use of disorientating tecniques to amplify a person’s responsiveness to suggestion is a classic ploy of talented persuaders. A politician knows that if he fires a set of confusing statistics at listeners, followed by a ‘summing up’, they are more likely to believe that concluding statement, rather than if he offered it without the deluge of too-much-to-take-in information first.”
That’s one I’m certainly going to try out on the husband. But also watch out for dodgy salesmen on the phone using it to persuade you to make a purchase.
6. Create yourself a new self image
There is a lot of talk about whether or not we have ‘confidence’ or even ‘self confidence’. But perhaps more important than this is the image that we have of ourselves. To illustrate this idea, Derren gives the example of a friend who has great confidence because he has a very flattering self image. He even believes himself to be tall despite of the fact that he is actually rather short. Another of his friends told him that, despite in reality being six foot four, he actually feels that other people are taller than him. So, do some work on the self image that you have for yourself, remembering to visualise it big and colourful like the happy experience you were imagining earlier.
Not bad for a magician, eh? And I’m actually now tempted to dig out a pendulum of some sort and have a go at a bit of hypnotism on the kids.
“As you listen to my voice and watch the Kinder egg dog swing from side to side, watching it as you feel very quiet and still in your chair, you’ll notice that your tummy begins to feel hungry and that you really want to eat some cabbage for your tea...”
