Image by griraffes Flickr.Com Creative Commons
So, my (ex)girlfriend and I went to check out the Body, Mind & Psychic Expo recently. I tagged along as she paid $35 for a massage, $40 for a twenty minute Tarot card reading with a Gypsy and $10 for a twenty minute goal setting session with a life coach.
Afterwards she told me that the Gypsy and the life coach had essentially given her the same advice, they both realised that she hated her job and came to the conclusion that she should be looking to do something different. However, my girlfriend told me that she really enjoyed the session with the Gypsy and basically hated talking to the life coach.
I thought, wow, that’s interesting, why was it that the Gypsy was charging $120 an hour to give Tarot card readings and getting swamped by customers, whilst the life coach was charging $30 an hour and struggling to get customers even though she was essentially doing the same thing and giving out the same type of advice?
After some thought I realised that there were three things that the Gypsy was doing that the life coach was not.
Firstly, the Gypsy was attributing his advice to an external force, Tarot cards were created by mystical Gypsies who had a special gift for fortune telling that had been passed down to them from within their families from generation to generation, whilst the life coach was essentially just dishing out advice based on her own personal experiences.
Secondly, the Gypsy was using the Tarot cards as a point of reference providing situational relevance for his observations and conclusions, whilst the source of the life coach’s advice was her own intangible thoughts and ideas. The things that can be seen, touched and experienced in the here and now are often more relevant… and what is relevant is generally more interesting to most people.
Thirdly, the Gypsy asked open ended questions, using the Tarot cards as a way of prompting further conversational threads and encouraging additional lines of thought, whilst the life coach was asking closed ended questions like “are you happy with your life?” and “do you like the current job that you are in?” essentially conducting an interrogation which meant that the customer would have to do a lot of the hard work and thinking instead of letting the answers flow naturally.
So what I’m going to do today is just provide you guys with some examples of cold reading techniques that you can use to hopefully improve your conversations with others and get your message across in a more effective and readily acceptable way.
“Cold” refers to the fact that these techniques allow you to “read” someone and demonstrate that you potentially know a lot about them from having acquired a relatively small amount of personal information from them.
The first cold reading technique that I want to mention is also the most well known form of cold reading otherwise referred to as Astrology. Every morning you can go grab a copy of the Advertiser, look up your star sign and hope it has a clue in there about what’s in store for you, who you might meet or where the day might take you. But astrology is good for way more than predicting the future. Your sign says a lot about who you are, in the here and now, how you deal with other people and what you think of yourself.
When people talk about your sign, they’re usually talking about your sun sign. But Western astrology is about a lot more than that – your moon sign, your rising signs, houses, planets and all kinds of other stuff also plays a big role.
Some people rely on ancient traditions like numerology or Astrology to understand personalities. And some people like to stick to science. For them psychology, psychiatry and anatomy are the real keys to understanding identity. If you’re one of these people, the second cold reading technique that I’m going to quickly go through is right up your alley.
The most famous psychological profiling system is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. The experts who came up with it in the 1940s and 1950s figured that anyone’s personality could be understood based on their answers to four basic questions:
(1) Where do you draw your energy from?
(2) How do you take in information?
(3) How do you make decisions?
And (4) how do you like to run your life?
Each question can be answered in two ways and when all is said and done, how you answer each question helps determine who you are.
The third type of cold reading technique is one that has become quite popular over the last few years, invented by mystical Sufis of ancient Islam they are referred to as visualisation games. Now, instead of just telling you about it I’d like to give you a quick demonstration, so grab a pen and some paper and jot down some answers to these questions.
1. Imagine that you are walking through a forest and that you run into a wild scary animal, what kind of animal is it? How big is it?
2. Ok, let’s say that you are trying to run away from the scary wild animal and you come across a river, how do you get across that river? Whatever answer you choose for this one is acceptable.
3. Ok, now let’s say you manage to get across the river and make your way towards a house, does the house have a fence around it? Describe the fence, how high is it?
Ok, now, the house represents how you relate to the outside world. If you said that your house has a fence around it, it means that you are a fairly private person and don’t let people into your life too easily. Where as if your house has no fence it means that you are a very open person and make friends easily.
The wild animal represents your problems. If you said that your scary wild animal was rather large, it means that you have big problems and that you let your problems dominate you. Whereas if you said that your scary wild animal was rather small, it means that you see your problems as being fairly small and that you are in control of your problems.
And the river represents how you deal with your relationships. If you said that you would jump in and swim across, it means that you are the kind of person who would metaphorically “jump into” a relationship. Whereas if you said that you would build a bridge or find some other more intelligent way to get across it means that you tend to be more cautious when getting into relationships.
These are just some of the many examples of cold reading and they all have similar attributes, they all can be attributed to an external force, they are situationaly relevant because they rely on you making some fairly simple observations about the other person and they all provide opportunities for further exploration and discussion.
There is one disclaimer however, ok, so you are absolutely unique. There is no person in the world like you. It follows from this that no cold reading technique can measure you – it can only describe the family, tribe or group to which you belong. I will say that again, these techniques aren’t meant to define you necessarily just the family to which you most likely belong.
I would like to suggest that cold reading is not a form of voodoo, witchcraft or magic but a very simple and effective way of ensuring that what you are saying is relevant and interesting… and therefore a very powerful tool for communicating with others and developing rapport.
