The Snowball Effect: Communication Techniques to Make You Unstoppable

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When you want to remove someone’s final reason for saying “no”

My mum says “you know you’re getting older when you bend down to tie your shoes and think ‘what else can I do while I’m down here?’ ”

You see, there’s always a positive if you look hard enough.

Which is good because life’s full of people who love to say “The answer’s no. Now what was your question?” Life is also full of people who are nearly convinced, but aren’t quite. Both stop you moving forward with your plans.

One way around this – and you won’t believe how easy this sounds, nor how often it works – is to simply include a negative in your question. For example:

“Can you think of a good reason why we shouldn’t go ahead?”So when they say “no”, it means “no, there aren’t any reasons ...