Cold

Reading

George Hutton

Mind Persuasion

©MindPersuasion

Contents

Cold Reading Defined

Human Thought Structure

Common Human Fears

Common Human Desires

The Nature of Intuition

Structure Language

Cause Effect Generator

Blurring Reality - Yours and Theirs

Adding Hypnotic Techniques

Meta Journaling

Eliciting ideas

Meta Situations

Create A Personal Angel

Practice Out Loud

Pacing and leading

Cause Effect Language

Hypnotic Patterns

Linguistic Presuppositions

Strongest Presuppositions

Universal Desires with Presuppositions

Cold Reading Trifecta

Cold Reading Compliments

Third Person Magic

Post Hypnotic Suggestions

More Common Experiences

Drive-By Intuition Readings

The Great Paradox

Final Words

Contact

Further Study

Mind Persuasion Books

Introduction

You will learn some very powerful communication techniques in this guide. Taken to their extreme, you will be able to convince others, people you already know or people that you’ve just met, that you know deep truths about them. And you will. You will learn techniques and skills that will allow you to peer through the surface level that people present, and understand the hidden truths about their personality, their hopes and dreams, as well as their fears and insecurities. You will find out that this is much easier than you may now realize. This guide is called Cold Reading, which means you will understand much about people from a very small amount of information. Cold reading is different from psychic reading. This guide is not about how to read people’s minds. This guide will not teach you how to predict the future, nor guess what card they are holding or what number between one and a hundred they are thinking of. What you will learn will be much more profound and applicable. You can use these techniques any time you are having a conversation with another human. And if you use these techniques effectively, that other human will not only be impressed with your insight, but based on how you present these skills, they may even believe that you are indeed clairvoyant. How you use this guide is ultimately up to you. But we must warn you that if you misuse these techniques, it won’t be without repercussions. We won’t spend a lot of time warning you about laws of karma or unexpected consequences. You either already know this, in which case it would be a waste of time. Or you will do this anyway, and any words of warning won’t have an effect, and would therefore be a waste of time. The techniques you learn will take time to study, and understand, and then practice. While there will be several fully written out patterns that will work very well, understand these are examples. Patterns you write out on your own will be much better. Cold reading patterns you generate on the fly will be even more impressive. Consider this the goal, to be able to create cold reading patterns on the fly, with anybody, during any situation. This will give you an enormous amount of conversational power and insight into human nature. This will allow you to leave a lasting impressing on anybody within minutes. This will make you unforgettable, if you wish to be.

Human Nature

Much of this will be based on an understanding of human nature. Most of us have very similar thoughts. But because we never discuss these thoughts with others, (we are too embarrassed or shy or worried how people will react) we believe these thoughts are unique to ourselves. When you understand the basic structure of human nature, this will give you much more insight into how people are thinking in situations.

Beyond Barnum Statements

Barnum statements are statements that are true about everybody. For example, even though we have never met, I know many things about you. For example, there was a time in the past when you knew you needed a full night’s sleep, for a specific purpose, but you tossed and turned. The more you worried about not getting enough sleep, the more this worry kept you awake. I also know that there are some people in your life that you are attracted to, but you worry how or if you might express your attraction to that person. I also know that there are a few things you’ve been meaning to do, and as you think about those things now, they might start to cause you anxiety. You would like to have them done, in your past, having been complete, but you haven’t yet found the motivation to do those. The things I know about you are true about every human. Cold reading is based, in part, on universal human experiences. But until you read those sentences above, you weren’t thinking about those things. Barnum statements are true for everybody, but they are delivered in a way that makes it obvious they are true for everybody. Cold reading is much more personal, much more contextual, and therefore much more effective. Barnum statements are true for everybody, but they are always true for everybody. You will learn to find the right Barnum statements, the ones that are not only true but are present in mind. The things they are actually thinking of in the moment. This will be much easier than you realize. But it will take a bit of understanding of human nature. It will take some understanding of reading and interpreting body language. It will take some time to choose the right Barnum statements that are most appropriative for the time and place.

Quick Example

This is an oversimplified example, but it illustrates what we are getting at. Most humans struggle with eating. Some struggle a little, some struggle a lot. Some struggle often, some struggle only from time to time. But a universal human experience is wanting to eat more but realizing that it might not be a good idea. Another common human experience is the day after we’ve overeaten. When we wake up, get in and out of the shower, get dressed, and put on our clothes. Then as we put fasten our pants or buckle our belt, we remember the day before when we’ve eaten too much. We get angry or upset with ourselves for having too little willpower. Our mind drifts to worst case thinking when we imagine ballooning up and others commenting about not only our lack of willpower, but our obese state. Some of us dwell on these thoughts long and often. Some of us dwell on these thoughts briefly and infrequently. But we’ve all had them. When would be a good time to bring these up? When you are with somebody, and they are in the situation when they are considering eating more. This could be at a buffet, this could be at a party, or at your home. How would you deliver such a statement? First, wait until the recipient is right at the precipice. When they are fifty percent decided on having another plate, and fifty percent decided on not. Right before their body shifts, you can take a look at them and start off with an innocuous statement like this:

I can tell you are of two minds.

So far so good, you have effectively paced where they are, mentally. But as such, they are only thinking, “should I, or shouldn’t I?” This is when you can explain, in great detail, what is going on in each of their two minds. You can describe all the times they’ve put off eating more and have felt good about themselves. You can describe all the times they’ve not done so and have felt guilty the next day. Both will be true, and as you further describe each of their two minds, they’ll naturally find many of either experiences. This will give them a real feeling that you know exactly what is inside their head. This is a Barnum statement, make no mistake. But it is a very carefully delivered, very contextual Barnum statement. There is also a lot more going on, which we will discuss in much detail.

Cold Reading Defined

Cold reading is not psychic. It is not seeing things inside their mind through any kind of telepathy or other paranormal skills. You won’t learn how to predict lottery numbers or divine people’s future. But you will learn a lot of techniques that will give that impression, if that’s what you intend. Simple Barnum statements are easy to spot. These are the stuff of horoscopes. Horoscopes are written so they are true for pretty much anybody. Yet at the same time, plenty of people read and depend on horoscopes. So, when you learn the techniques in this guide, to take that same technique but make it much more personal and contextual, you will have a much more profound effect than even the most accurate horoscope.

Science and Magic

It is a common idea that science that is beyond understanding will be interpreted as magic. This is generally applied on a society wide basis. For example, a group of explorers who visit a primitive culture will be perceived as gods or magicians, so long as they bring advanced technology. But this is also applicable on a one-on-one level. Plenty of people spend plenty of time learning sleight of hand magic tricks. We enjoy watching these tricks, even paying money to see them. Yet we know full well that they are tricks, that they aren’t really magic. Yet we try very hard to pretend they are magic. We watch movies that have famous actors pretending to be superheroes that have seemingly magical abilities. Yet those blatant special effects and CGI somehow creates real emotions in us. We go to movies and magic shows with eyes wide open, yet we still allow ourselves to be momentarily tricked. These techniques will be kind of like that, except you won’t announce that you are using any magic tricks. You’ll just start communicating in a certain way to people that speak to them on a much deeper level. Even if they are pure skeptics who don’t believe in any kind of paranormal abilities, they will still be deeply impressed. But because you won’t announce that you are using any kind of language technology, they won’t even have time to consider what the trick is. If you were to start doing card tricks, everybody around you would immediately know that you are using sleight-of-hand. Yet the thought process of, hey, that guy’s using sleight-of-hand, but it’s pretty cool, so I’ll allow myself to be impressed, would be quick and mostly subconscious. When magic tricks are blatant, we still automatically and subconsciously switch into a mode of thinking that allows us to believe, if only temporarily, in magic. We very much like to believe in real magic. These language techniques will have a much more profound impact. They will have a deep sense that you know things about them that others don’t. Even pure skeptics will enjoy that feeling.

Human Universals

This idea is slightly similar to, but different than, universal experiences. Donald Brown, and anthropologist, theorized about Human Universals. That every culture has very similar elements. He spent his career studying vastly different cultures across the world looking specifically for similarities. And he found plenty. Despite differences in technology or size, we human share plenty of traits. One of which is a belief in “magic.” Either religion, superstition, or metaphysics, it seems that all humans very much believe, in one way or another, in a system of laws or entities that we can’t seem to prove or disprove. When you use the techniques in this guide effectively, you will trigger this natural human belief in magic.

When to Use

When can you use these? Whenever you want. Like any other language techniques, you’ll need to establish a little bit of rapport first. Very much like sales, you won’t have much success if you walk up to a stranger on the street and start cold reading them. But there are many ways that you can quickly create interest, and then share with them something unique about themselves. Once you become comfortable introducing these ideas, you can use them anywhere, any time. Job interviews, sales calls, conversations in social situations. It’s recommended that you practice these on people that you don’t know very well. Your friends and family already have an idea of who you are, and what kind of communication style you use. Since the techniques in this guide will seem different than how you normally communicate, those closest to you will be the most likely to notice something is a bit off.

How to Use

We’ll go through various techniques, but you’ll find these are most effective after you are in a friendly conversation with somebody, and you’ve gotten a little bit of information on them. One thing that will help is the idea that communication is more than ninety percent non-verbal. You’ll be able to read volumes about your target by how they talk, how they move, where they look when they are talking, how long they maintain eye contact, and many other non-verbal cues. You’ll also get the most use out of these if you use them as applied to the person’s future. We all love to believe good things about ourselves, yet we are all a little shy about expressing these good things. We also have a sense of sniffing out any people who are giving us blatant compliments. But you can deliver these compliments, the positive assumptions we’d all like to believe about ourselves in a very roundabout way, via cold reading techniques. This will make them much more believable, and much more effective. The result will be that your target will feel much better about themselves, and they will associate that better feeling about themselves with your unique skills in reading people. We will discuss precisely why this is, and how to create this effect with the most impact later. But a good general rule is to use these techniques to make people feel better about themselves, and to feel better about their future. This will significantly increase your believability and enhance any relationships you are building or enhancing with these techniques.

Human Thought Structure

One element to understand that will make many of these techniques easier is the process of human thought. This is both common and ordinary, but at the same time deeply mysterious. Human consciousness is something that is incredibly hard to study from a neurological standpoint. What’s important for us to understand is the sequence of events as they normally happen.

Assumed Sequence of Events

From inside our own perspective, we have this consciousness. This “I” that is inside our mind-body system. This self-awareness that is always looking around and measuring the things as they happen around us. We have a body and we have five senses. We take in data from our five senses and construct an idea of what is going on around us. When something happens that requires our involvement, the self-awareness that is inside watching and monitoring everything makes a decision. Our body then moves according to that decision. Your friend tosses you a ball, you watch it coming and your self-awareness tells your body how to move so you can catch it, rather than getting hit in the face. Essentially, our entire existence can be described as this self-awareness watching and measuring, and then deciding and acting. We acknowledge that sometimes this happens automatically, either from learned instincts, or automatic instincts. If you play any sports, this is an example of learned instincts. If you saw a spider running across the floor and you jumped back, this would be an example of programmed instincts.

Actual Sequence of Events

Something strange happens when they hook up machines to brains. They’ll put somebody in a chair, have a bunch of electrodes hooked up to them, and then stimulate them on the arm. This stimulation will create an itch, and then the test subject will reach over and scratch it. From the perspective of the test subject, the sequence of events is as follows. Awareness of the itch, followed by a decision to scratch the itch, followed by a scratching of the itch. But from the perspective of the scientists who are objectively measuring what’s really going on, the process is slightly different. First the stimulation, then the beginnings of the movement, and finally the awareness. Not only does our conscious awareness come last, but it somehow interprets events with itself in the driver’s seat. This experiment is repeated many times under many different scenarios. 95% of the time, our conscious awareness is only made aware of something after we’ve begun to take some kind of action. Yet most of the time, our conscious awareness believes it is the decider, and not the watcher.

After the Fact Storyteller

Based on as much scientific observation as they’ve managed to acquire, it seems very much like our consciousness is a lagging element. A watcher, who makes up its own involvement as a decider. It makes up reasons why we are acting, and within those made up reasons, it puts itself as the decider. This may be a function of our ego, which seems to have a very strong need to put that inner awareness as the center of importance as much as possible. Perhaps believing this inner awareness is in charge is a survival instinct. Why this is so is beyond our purpose. We only need to understand that it is so.

Hindsight Bias

One of our biases is hindsight bias. This is when we look back in the past, and kind of change how we remember things. Our in-the-moment consciousness as a storyteller is a way to pretend we are in charge. Our hindsight bias is a way to remember things slightly differently, to give ourselves more of a central role in what happened. We don’t seem to like remembering things that happened to us unexpectedly. Perhaps we don’t like to remember ourselves being caught off guard. When unexpected things happen, we remember them as being slightly less than unexpected.

Psychic Phenomenon

This is one of the ways that psychics are believed to be really psychic. They have a way to coming up with information about us in a very roundabout way. They use this information to verify good things about ourselves. They also combine those good things about us as being delivered through their psychic ability. Then later, we don’t remember them as being lucky guessers, because that would diminish the positive things they’ve said about us. Instead, we remember the event as them actually knowing that we have a sixty-three-year-old uncle names Horace who taught us how to bake cheesecake when we were in elementary school. Professional psychics are very much like physicians and therapists, in that they have a lot of practicing in communicating with people. Therapists have a lot of experience talking to people about problems. So, after a while, they start to be able to read people and find out what kinds of issues they have. Physicians have experience listening to people describe symptoms. Combined with things like blood tests, they can accurately determine what’s wrong in a very short amount of time. Professional psychics have a lot of practice talking to people and carefully eliciting information from their clients in a way that will later be mis-remembered via the magic of hindsight bias that will make the psychic seem much more psychic. We’ll see later just how to do this. With enough practice, you will be able to develop the same skill as professional psychics. There is a lot more going on with professional psychics, and we will learn later what those things are. But for now, understand that how we perceive the flow of events, and how we remember events that happened is very inaccurate.

Pacing and Leading

One very easy technique will learn later is how to verbally pace and lead. This leverages the real time flow of events, and with a little bit of practice, you’ll learn how to blur the line between pacing and leading, and your targets will begin to believe you are actually reading their thoughts as they are thinking them.

Information Mismatch

Another very powerful idea is that the ratio of the things we notice, to the ratio of things hitting our senses is incredibly small. There is also a lot of other elements to our memories that you can leverage for maximum cold reading benefit.

Common Human Fears

All humans have the same basic fears. Understanding our common fears is one key to cold reading. Because if you can look inside your own mind and honestly address the structure of your own fears, you will be much more realistic when vaguely describing the fears of others. Of course, always remember the purpose is to ultimately assume good things about the person you are speaking to. A great way to do that is to first accurately describe the fears, and how they might have not been able to overcome them in the past, and then use some other technology to make some assumptions about the future. This is a very common structure, one that is found in many effective sales pages. The more effectively sales pages can accurately describe the problem of the reader, the more sales they can make. This is essentially cold reading in text form to a wide audience.

Pace the Problem

First describe the problem. If the sales page is about a new set of golf clubs, then there are many ways to do this. The first few paragraphs might describe a situation where the reader is playing golf with a supervisor or a potential client. But the reader has some old golf clubs that not only look bad but keep him from playing a decent game and impressing his boss or his potential client. The letter can describe in great detail how stepping to the tee with the old clubs can feel. As he squares up against the ball, he feels the pressure, he sees his old driver, and this causes worry. The most important shot of the day. If he slices or hooks it out of bounds, he might lose the sale or not get the promotion. This is a universal human experience. Of getting ready to do anything that feels like a performance and have your mind flooded with worst case scenarios.

Present the Solution

Once the problem is adequately described, the solution is presented. But it’s not literally presented as a solution. In our golf club example, the first third of the sales letter would describe the problem. Then the next third would describe a new set of clubs. It won’t say exactly that these new clubs are the solution, but the reader will assume they are. We’ll explore this in much more detail later, but we all have a very powerful cause-effect generator in our brains. Expert copywriters know they don’t have to expressly say things like, “If you buy these new clubs, then your problems will be solved.” All they need to do is accurately describe the problem. This gives the reader the feeling that the sales page (and the company it represents) is a real authority on all golf problems. They don’t just sell golf clubs, but they know exactly what is going on in the mind of the poor golfers that suck. And since they know this, their clubs are assumed by the reader to be the solution.

Amplify the Solution

Once the actual golf clubs are described, then the rest is the sales page is about all the benefits of these clubs. Straighter shots. Bigger sweet spot. Impressive look. All these serve to counter any specific problem the particular reader has in mind.

I Know and Understand Your Problems

This all starts with the sales letter that knows the deep emotional feelings of the problem. These problems are common, but they are rarely talked about. Because they are rarely talked about, many of us believe these problems are unique to us. Of course, when we read about them in a sales letter for new golf clubs, we kind of assume that all golfers share the same problem. For one-on-one cold reading, the structure is the same. You’ll able to accurately understand the problems of your target, and by describing them carefully (more on that later), you will give them the impression that their problems are kind of unique, and you somehow have some keen insight into their problems. Later, we’ll learn some cause-effect techniques to solidify the idea of you having special insight. Even when reading horoscopes, it’s easy to pretend that these aren’t merely Barnum statements. To the extent that sales letters work, buyers can pretend they aren’t Barnum statements. But when you deliver these ideas directly to them, with the language patterns we’ll learn later, it will seem much more profound.

Common Fears

We are all afraid of expressing ourselves. We are all afraid of rejection and failure. We are all afraid of getting left behind, and the famous and very useful Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). We all express ourselves and our ideas much less effectively than we want to. We rarely have days where everything goes perfectly. We all want things we are afraid of committing to, because if we commit to get those things, and we fail, we lose the ability to dream about those things.

Dig Inside Your Brain

The more you can be honest with your own fears and anxieties, the easier you’ll be able to cold read the fears of others. This takes a lot of courage. But the flip side is you’ll be able to create fast and deep connections with nearly everybody. You will have the real ability to make people feel like they’ve known you and you’ve known them, for your entire lives after only a five or ten-minute conversation.

Go First

It’s extremely difficult to cold read others effectively if you are closed off to your own emotions. It’s also much easier to be congruent when describing the fears and anxieties of others while partially feeling your own. Humans are emotional creatures, and one way to see human communication is a kind of emotional resonance. The more you can partially resonate the same emotions you are describing in others, the more congruent you will seem. You’ll find that congruence and emotional accuracy will go a long way in creating a deep and lasting impression on anybody.

How to Practice

Journaling is your best friend. Find some place where you can sit socially and start to imagine situations. Most of our fears are social, finance or health (death) related. Find a place where you can sit and write where there are many people. Look at somebody whom you’d like to have a romantic affair with, should they approach you and take all the risk. Then think about approaching them. As you think about approaching, describe all your fears and anxieties as accurately as you can. Do this with several people, from as many perspectives as you can. Next, find somebody who appears to be much more financially well off than you. Open yourself up to any idea of trying to become more financially successful, and simply describe the fears and anxieties that come up. The first few times you do this it will seem painful and difficult. But the more you do this, the more you’ll start to get comfortable thinking in these terms. Then you’ll start to notice very familiar patterns of fears and anxieties. Once you get to this level, you’ll be ready to read others. All you simply do is watch others how they are looking around, who they are looking at, and you’ll have a very good idea of their deep fears and anxieties. This is much easier than you realize, but it requires you do this exercise enough to start seeing familiar patterns of thinking in various situations (social, romantic attraction, finance, health etc.).

Common Human Desires

Universal desires are much easier (and a lot less painful) to get a handle on because they are easy, natural and pleasurable to think about. Dreaming about more money is much easier on the brain than worrying about becoming homeless. Dreaming about having a six pack and turning heads wherever you go is much better than worrying about that lump that you worry is going to kill you. And all human desires are surface structure expressions of human instincts.

Basic Instinct Description

Instincts compel is to do things. We evolved from lower animals. We split off from chimps about six million years ago. Chimps and humans have 98% similarities in DNA. Humans and chimps (and to an extent, other primates) share a lot of social behaviors. Instinct compel us to action so don’t have to remember to do things. Instincts are much more powerful than our rational thought process. The conscious mind paradox we talked about earlier, (where the conscious mind is more often a lagging element that makes up stories about why we do things) is essentially watching our instincts make all the decisions, and then coming up for a rational reason after the fact. Our fears and anxieties are surface level descriptions of things we don’t want. Death, separation, lack of food and resources, getting clobbered by another human, etc. Surface level desires are expressions of deeper instincts that compel us to get things.

What Do We Want?

We want food. We want shelter. We want companionship. We want sex. We want to be part of something important. We want to express our skills in a way that helps our friends and family. We want recognition for our efforts.

Kill the Big Animal

Some researchers were watching a tribe in Africa who lived like our ancient hunter gatherers. They were puzzled, because when they went hunting, they could choose one of two animals. A very large animal, which was dangerous and had a low success rate. Or a very small animal, which was safe and had a very high success rate. At first, it didn’t make any sense why they would always hunt the larger animal. From a purely rational standpoint, they should be hunting the smaller animal. The smaller animal would yield more meat per hunt, on average, and be much safer. But they almost never hunted the small animal. It was all clear when they finally brought back a big animal (a giraffe). The guy responsible for the kill was treated like a rock star. And he got secret sex on the side, even though he had a monogamous relationship with another woman. The secret sex was in exchange for some meat. This gives us a clue to our social instinct. We crave large and conspicuous successes that get us rock start treatment. We don’t just want rock star treatment for the sake of rock star treatment. We want rock star treatment for doing something that other people deem very valuable and necessary.

Prime Directive

There are essentially three things we crave. Food, sex and social status. Or in the case of humans, we crave money, sex, and social status. But it turns out that above a certain level of social status, money and sex are a result. Below a certain level of social status, money has to be chased separately, and sex has to be chased separately. Below a level of social status, the rule of a dog not being able to chase two rabbits very much applies. But above a certain level of social status, money and sex is a result. Of course, it doesn’t have to be pure sex. It can be love, deep romantic relationships with emotionally, intellectually and otherwise compatible people. But all those external things (love, romance, compatibility) are all wrapped around the ancient instinctive desire for sex. When studying chimps, (whom we split from six million years ago) there is a direct correlation between social status and both sex and food. And since there seems to be a pretty strong correlation today between social status and both money and ease of or access to relationships, we can make a rough estimate of the prime directive of all human life. The main thing we all crave. We all want to make huge accomplishments. We all want to make huge accomplishments that truly help those closest to us. We all want rock star recognition for that accomplishments. We want the social status afforded to those who get those huge accomplishments. In ancient humans, these meant consistently killing the biggest animal, getting rock start treatment from everybody, and secret sex on the side with everybody’s wives. This is the ancient alpha, the ancient quarterback of the tribe.

You Will Do Great Things

This is the secret to massive cold reading success. To have an insight that they will be successful, and their success will be translated into massive social status, massive recognition and the financial security and access to love and relationships that goes with that. Many popular books and movies (Harry Potter, for example) involve a normal person being forced onto the path of greatness. Of doing great things that help their friends, family and social circle in a real and tangible way and getting massive recognition because of it. This is what we all crave. We all very much want to hear that we will be successful. We very much want to hear, and believe, that one day we will do something of significant importance and receive the validation that we want.

Cold Reading Essence

The secrets of being a believable cold reader is as follows. Very much like a sales letter, pace their fears as accurately and congruently as you can. Then tell them they will one day achieve greatness. That despite how bleak their lives look, they will achieve success. Any kind of professional psychic gives their readings in this format. They might not say blatantly, but they give advice to help people become successful. They give advice on how to find love. On how to find financial success. Both presuppose they are on the path, and they only need to take a few more steps to get there. That is one way, and we will learn many more. But the basic structure is simple, and is as follows:

You may be feeling pain now, but there is something about you, something I sense, that indicates something you do in your future will lead to greatness. Something you might know now, something that maybe you haven’t yet discovered. But if you continue, you will find it, you will understand it, and you will make that your destiny. To achieve greatness, to help others, and to be recognized for the masses for your accomplishments.

The Nature of Intuition

The conscious mind can only perceive a small fraction of the information that hits our senses every second. The part of our brain responsible for the deciding which goes to our conscious mind, which goes into to storage, and which is discarded is the pre-conscious processor. Part of that is hard wired. Things that indicate danger is forced into our conscious awareness whether we like it or not. Snakes, mice, other creepy-crawlies, the sound of our alarm clock. Other things are kind of hard wired but are easily re-calibrated. If you moved to a foreign country, it wouldn’t take very long to re-calibrate the money on the street filter. We all have the same response to our own name, but it’s something that isn’t set until our name is chosen for us by others.

Two Way Communication

We put information into our brain, and we need to get information out of our brain. Taking tests, giving answers to questions, playing along with game shows, there is plenty of ways a request for information hits our senses, and our brains must come up with the answer. But sometimes this two-way communication is vague. Consider that the amount of specificity of the question is related to the amount of specificity of the answer. If your teacher looks at you and ask you a specific question, you’d better have an answer. But sometimes the request is very vague. Like you are bored, and you walk into a large shopping mall. The vague question is, how can I best spend my time, and both minimize effort and maximize result. The vague answer is usually something like wandering around and just kind of letting your gut decide which shops you wander in and out of. This is one description of intuition. A searching in your brain for a vague answer to a vaguely presented question.

Non-Verbal Communication

Humans have been living in tight knit groups ever since we split from chimps six million years ago. But we’ve only developed language about 200,000 years ago and advanced culture only 50,000 years ago. But chimps communicate with each other just fine. And when you consider that less than 10% of communication is verbal, that means there’s a lot going on under the surface. Advanced body language readers (like police interrogators) have years of experience in reading people. But most of us can only get a rough feeling regarding non-verbal communication. You may have plenty of experience of suspecting somebody is not being one hundred percent truthful, but there’s nothing specific you could put your finger on. You just have a feeling that he or she is lying to you. This is another form of intuition. The non-verbal, below conscious awareness, person to person communication.

Improve Your Intuition

There are plenty of exercises you can do to improve your intuition. One is to ask yourself a specific question upon entering a large area, and then letting your intuition guide you to the answer. For example, if you entered into a supermarket, (specifically for this exercise) you might consider asking where the healthiest food is. Always remember that intuition is simply reading the information from others or your environment on a subconscious level. By defocusing your eyes, and walking while specifically seeing things only through your peripheral vision, you would be practicing your intuition. Another way to do this is to walk slowly around a crowded room, where most people are sitting. You can sort for various things, and practice looking for those things only using your peripheral vision. For example, you could sort for happy people, and then see who you find. You can briefly shift out of peripheral vision and into regular vision to verify. Then you can sort for sad people. Or couples that are happy together, or couples that are angry at each other.

Free Note After Events

Free noting is a great way to do a data dump of your brain, especially after a conversation. Free noting is when you write as quickly as you can, without pausing to even think about what you are writing. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling or anything. Once you get the hang of it (the hardest part will be to stop worrying about spelling and grammar mistakes) you’ll find you have a ton of information in your brain. So long as you stay focused on various aspects of any previous communication, you’ll amaze yourself with how much information you have.

How To

Start by free noting after any conversation. First start by writing about all the things you imagine that your conversation partner is worried or anxious about. If you are friends with them, or even if you’ve just met, so long as you’ve had a minimum level of rapport (which is automatic unless there is something specifically blocking it), you will have subconsciously resonated with on those fears. So, the information will really seem like it is coming from you, or that you are even making it up. But it will be surprisingly accurate. Just write for five to ten minutes about the kinds of things they are afraid of or anxious of, based on that conversation. Then shift into some of the things they want, the things they would like to have happen. Then shift to a mix of both. They want X, but they are afraid of Y and Z. Finally, shift into ideal future mode, with respect to them and their desires. Let your mind roam freely, assuming they will get over all their fears, anxieties and obstacles. Start to imagine (which will be surprisingly accurate) their ideal way of achieving greatness by accomplishing something magnificent. Describe how what they will accomplish in amazing detail. It will only take a few times with this exercise to convince yourself that this data exists in your mind after every conversation. That means there is tons of information being passed back and forth whenever you talk to others. It’s just a matter of training your intuition to be open to this. Just this exercise alone will make you much more empathic, and much more capable of reading people, which will help immensely. Pretty soon you’ll start to see some common themes, fears and anxieties you are picking up intuitively from others that are very similar. The goal is to be able to speak to strangers, and within just a few minutes of conversation, be able to accurately describe their fears, their desires, and their ideal future.

Structure Language

To have the most effect as a cold reader, you’ll need to get used to the idea of communication structure, and to a larger part, behavioral structures. First, we’ll discuss linguistic structures, and some ways to practice it. Then we’ll discuss behavioral structures, specifically the external structures that influence our behaviors, and ways to notice and understand this.

Linguistic Structure

Language has both structure and content. Noam Chomsky, in his theory of transformational grammar, theorized that all human language is the same structure, and therefore the same language. The differences are merely local dialects. All languages have nouns, verbs, pronouns, adverbs, etc. And as it turns out, the overall structure is mirrored in smaller sub-structures within the same language. Chomsky referred to this as X-bar theory. For example, the structure of a main sentence in any given language is very similar to smaller structures like noun phrases and verb phrases. Chomsky believes we have these language switches in our brains. And once we figure out the structures of the smaller switches (noun phrases, verb phrases, etc.) this is mirrored throughout the entire language. This is why children are suddenly capable of speaking entire, fully formed sentences they’ve never heard before. Plenty of tests bear this out. At a very young age, children are coaxed experimentally into speaking made up sentences with made up verbs and made up nouns. But since their language-structure switches have all been calibrated, they use them as if they behaved according to the same rules. How do we apply this? Consider these two sentences:

Yesterday I went down to my local park and ate a hot dog while watching some kids ride their skateboards around.

Before, I went someplace and ate something outside while I watched some children playing.

Both sentences have the exact same structure. One is specific, and one is not. But unless somebody is specifically trying to determine the level of specificity of your speech, they won’t really know the difference. The first sentence will be followed, and the pictures in their mind will be provided by your descriptions. But in the second sentence, there are no pictures provided. This isn’t usually noticed, and when we listen to sentences like that, we tend to put in our own pictures. This is one technique professional psychics use to get us to remember that they used very specific language, when in reality, they left a few carefully placed vague ideas. Then later, we remember the pictures we provided as if they were spoken by the psychic. There are many ways to do this, which we will focus on later. For now, get into the habit of noticing and using both types. Vague language with vague content, and specific language with specific content.

How to Practice

One way is to describe things you’ve seen, like TV shows, movies or events. But as you describe them, put in vague nouns and verbs. For example, when describing a movie, use as much vague language as you can. Since you’ve seen the movie, you can recall the specific events while using vague language. For example, consider the following description:

I saw this cool movie last night. These two guys that were engineers quit their job and decided to become diamond thieves. They ended up coming up with an ingenious plan to crack the security code of this criminal fencing operation, since they knew he wouldn’t report the theft to the police.

That sounds specific. But consider the following sentence, which describes the same thing:

I saw this cool movie the other night. These two normal guys decided to quit their regular jobs and become criminals. They found a really cool way to rob these guys, so they wouldn’t be reported to the cops.

For now, just get into the habit of thinking in terms of structure vs. content.

Behavior Structure

Most of the things we do are caused by external factors that are usually outside of our conscious awareness. These are commonly known, and they are easy to see when they are affecting others, but for some reason, we can’t notice them when they are affecting us. This is very similar to our after-the-fact storytelling device we call a conscious mind. These external factors, first described by Cialdini, are briefly described below.

Authority

We tend to believe things much more when they come from a person with recognized authority. We tend to be more willing to follow instructions from a stranger when they have socially recognized authority.

Social Proof

We tend to be much more willing to take any action if many other people are also doing this. The more we identify with any social group, the more likely we’ll take action. On the flip side, we won’t feel comfortable doing anything unless others are also doing it.

Commitment and Consistency

We tend to do things that have worked before. This shows up when we stick to the same restaurants, the same food choices, and the same brands. We are much less willing to try new things that do things that are familiar.

Scarcity

All else equal, we will want something more if it is scarce. Even when we know this is “false scarcity” it still works. Meaning if you are considering buying something, any scarcity will increase your buying desire. Limited number of items, a sale for a limited time, or any other limitations will increase our buying desire.

Because these are very deep and normally out of our conscious awareness when they are operating on us, you can leverage this to a great extent when doing any cold reading. We will discuss techniques later. For now, begin to notice your decisions and those of your close friends and colleagues in light of these ideas.

Journaling

Think of any decision you’ve made in the past. Ask yourself which of these elements were present in your decision making. Ask yourself honestly if you would have made the same decision had none of these elements been present. Write out some things you absolutely believe to be true. Then try and justify these beliefs without referring to social proof or authority. This will be difficult, because most of our beliefs ONLY have authority and social proof to back them up. We believe things because the ideas come from reputable authority figures (academics, etc.) We may think we believe these things for scientifically valid reasons, but in reality, we believe them because the authority figure said they were true. If all you can say is you assume the authority figure has a scientifically valid reason for believing them, but that scientific reasoning is unknown to you, then that is only authority. This will be a difficult process. But the more you are willing to question your own beliefs in light of these external factors, the easier it will be to understand how and why others believe what they do. Whatever ideas you find in your own mind likely exist in the minds of others.

References

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini

The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language

Steven Pinker

Cause Effect Generator

One of the most profound things to understand that will make you an expert cold reader is the idea of cause and effect. If you were a scientist, and your job was to prove one thing caused another, it would be incredibly difficult. In order to scientifically prove that A caused B, you’d have to show that every single time, in every single condition, whenever A happened, B would happen. You would also have to show that B never happened unless A happened. You’ve likely heard the oft repeated statement, “correlation doesn’t mean causality,” because it is correct. But when it comes to any kind of scientific statement the line between correlation and causality is very blurred. Unless you’re doing a scientific proof in hopes of one day winning a Nobel prize, you’ll find that correlation is just fine.

Academic Research

If you were doing academic research, you’d need grant money. Grant money is given by people in government who don’t know anything about science. Grant money is given not to prove any kind of causality, only to explore relationships between things. Find any kind of recent scientific study, dig deep enough, and you’ll find that there is only correlation. And if you are any kind of academic researcher, all you need to do is to find interesting sounding correlations, and the grant money will keep flowing.

Evolutionary Ideas

Many believe that the reason we assume causality when it rarely exists is because it’s a lot easier on the brain. And the mathematical rules of natural selection (which add up over the generations to create evolutionary change) mean that even if you were wrong nine times out of ten, it still may be a benefit to make the causal link. For example, let’s say you’re an ancient caveman out for an afternoon stroll. You see a yellow flower. You have a cause-effect generator in your brain that says, “Yellow means tiger!” (X means Y is very similar in structure to X causes Y). So, you run away, screaming your head off. Only the yellow flower is really a yellow flower. But all it would take is one time to see a yellow flower, and not assume it is a tiger, and get eaten. That one would keep you from passing on those non-cause-effect genes. So, having a cause-effect generator that is wrong most of the time, is much better than not having a cause-effect generator. Also, consider a caveman that has a cause-effect generator, but it makes him do a little research first. Again, the guy that immediately runs way would be safer than the guy who wants to go closer to get more information. The net result is all of us have a very strong cause-effect generator in our brains that make us immediately assume cause-effect relationships without needing to do any more research. Consider the ideas from the last chapter, specifically regarding authority and social proof. If we add in the ideas of cause and effect (the authority said so, that means it’s true; my social group said so, that means it’s true) and this adds up to us humans holding absolutely false beliefs that are delivered through artificial cause-effect, authority, and social proof.

Experimental Proof

An interesting study was done with young children, six months old. They placed them in front of a computer screen. On the screen were two blips, and each blip was driven by a completely separate software program. They measured the baby’s facial expressions to see how they interpreted events. When both blips were moving, the baby was OK. When both blips stopped, the baby was OK. Only when one blip stopped, and the other kept moving did the baby act like something was very wrong with the universe. The researchers suspected that this indicated the baby assumed a causal link between the two independent blips.

Professional Psychics

What professional psychics, either consciously or unconsciously, do is create a causal link between the idea of them being psychic and the subject’s positive future, or the subject’s enhanced status compared to their social peers. Here is a very crude example. A person comes to see the psychic. They look at the person and ask for see a piece of their jewelry. They say their psychic energy is very strong, and they can get a reading from their jewelry. Let’s say they hand them a watch. The psychic looks at the watch and starts to describe the subject in the third person. This makes it slightly easier to give direct compliments without detection (we’ll discuss this technique later). All they need to do is deliver any vague compliment that makes the person either believe they are going to have a bright future (something they will very much want to believe). Or they will say something (using structure language) that very much like sounds like a compliment. And the structure of the compliment will make it sound like the subject is better in some way than their social peers, this implies they have higher social status (the prime directive). For example, they’ll look at the watch and say something like this:

I can get a sense from this watch about the owner. The owner wasn’t always the smartest person in school, but this person has a very unique way of looking at things, a way they can’t always describe to others, but is something they know is very special.

Let’s break down the vague statements, and see they apply to anybody with a pulse.

Wasn’t always the smartest person in school.

This is absolutely true for every single student who went to school. Even if they aced every test, most kids had fears at one point of under achieving.

Had a unique way of looking at things.

Everybody has a unique way of looking at things. But because of our ego, we all think our way of looking at things is better than others, at least sometimes. This makes us feel like unique is the same as better which implies social status.

Can’t always describe them to others.

Nobody can describe what’s in their mind accurately to others. This is a common human condition.

But something they know is special.

We all have thoughts that we think are unique and special, yet we can’t describe. This again enhances our desire to believe in anything suggesting enhanced social status.

The Cause Effect Trick

The effect is that the subject has their ego stroked. They feel like they have been noticed for having higher social status. The cause for this effect was the telepathic powers of the professional psychic. But there is also a flip side of this. The two sides of the cause-effect coin are these:

Psychic has real powers = I am special with higher social status

Psychic is faking = I am normal and not special

The psychic has effectively linked (cause-effect) his alleged psychic powers to our natural desire to believe we have higher social status than we really do.

Now, this may sound evil, dishonest, and criminal. But consider that most psychics do this naturally. They aren’t consciously conning their customers. But even if you were planning on one day becoming a professional psychic and charging people for readings, would that really be bad? People are paying you twenty bucks (or so) for you to tell them they are special. To tell them they have a bright future. To tell them they don’t need to worry about themselves or the future, that everything will be fine. Whether that is ethical or not is up to you. Just remember we voluntarily pay good money all the time knowing we are going to be deceived. Otherwise the movie industry wouldn’t exist. But if you are going to be using cold reading techniques simply to make people feel better, that’s not a bad thing.

Blurring Reality - Yours and Theirs

Blurred realities are a very powerful technique in conversational hypnosis. As it is usually used, it refers to the idea of many nested stories. One story begins, and then one character in that first story starts to tell a story to another character in that first story. Then the process repeats in the second story (a character telling another character a story). After three or four stories deep, it can be very confusing as to who is saying what to whom. Especially if all the stories are on the same kind of theme. Even more powerful is if, the storyteller, is also saying that “thing” to the listeners. So, the thing you are saying to the listener makes sense between the two of you (for example, buy my product) but it also makes sense in a couple of the other stories. All this adds up to is the listener not really sure who’s saying what to whom. We will be blurring realities a little differently.

Your Reality and Theirs

This works best if you’ve done some of the recommended journaling exercises earlier. The more you dig into your own brain, the better this technique will work. Here is a very simple example. We all have trouble going to a restaurant and not knowing what to decide. So, let’s imagine that in your nightly journaling session, you write about not knowing what to order. Let’s say you write this:

Today I went to lunch with my buddy. He knew what he wanted right away. But I didn’t. Because he put his menu down, I was worried the waitress, who is very cute, would think I was ready also. Then I got worried that she might come over and would think I’m an idiot for being indecisive. This made me even more nervous, which made it harder to decide. Finally, I chose something I really didn’t want, just so I wouldn’t look like an idiot. After I ordered something, I actually realized what I really wanted but was too embarrassed to tell the waitress to change my order.

This is a very common story that happens to most of us. It might bother us a little, it might bother us a lot. But it is common enough, so it can be used, when you see somebody in that same situation. So, when you describe this to a friend, it might come across as a bona fide psychic reading. Let’s say you are out with your friend, you make your choice quickly and put your menu down. You look over at them, and you notice they are thinking that thought above. How will you know? Their eyes are darting across the menu. They read something, seem like they are about to decide, and then look at another part of the menu. Their body language might be slightly closed off, as they hope this will make the waiter or waitress less likely to come sooner. How do you deliver the cold reading? Wait until the waiter comes over, and then say you need more time to order. Say it decisively so the waitress doesn't linger, and your eating partner doesn't have time to object. Then look at them and say something like this:

I know what you’re thinking. First you wanted something, but then you thought maybe you wanted something else. But then you noticed that I put my menu down, and that made you feel even more self-conscious. Maybe you started to get worried that the waiter would come over and you wouldn’t know what to get, which would make you guess. And that have maybe made you second guess yourself as soon as the waiter left. But don’t worry. Please take your time. I don’t want to order until you are ready.

The blurred reality part comes when you are describing the above. When you are looking at them, and describing the thought process in their mind, you are actually describing your own memory. This is why doing the journaling is so important. The more of these scenarios you can expand as much as possible from your own experiences, the more of an impression they’ll make on others. It’s extremely unlikely that the other person will say something like this:

Yeah, sure you know what I’m thinking. You are just telling me that because the same thing happened to you, and you noticed from my body language that I was doing the same thing.

The reason they won’t think that is because they were actually nervous, and you helped to ease their mind. This is essentially the same thing as saying:

I don’t think my friend is ready yet, can you come back?

This is what a very conscientious person would say. To notice the body language and darting eyes of their eating partner. You are saying the same thing, but you are describing their thought process in great detail. Even if they don’t believe you are psychic, they will at the very least assume you are a very aware and kind person. And all it takes is a little time to explore your own experiences in detail, look for these same experiences in others (knowing that all us humans have pretty much the same experiences in the same situations), and then describe their thought process in detail. And because you are also describing your own thought processes, you will be congruent, and you will be sympathetic. The real and genuine emotions you feel when describing your own memories will be interpreted by them as being real and genuine sympathy for their situation. This follows the model of humans-as-emotional-resonating machines. If you are on a first date, this will create a very strong impression. If you are with a potential client, this will also create a very strong impression. If you are with a friend, this will create a very strong impression. All by simply noticing in them a very common human experience that you took the time to notice, and describe, in yourself.

How to Practice

This requires you first have enough memories like the one above written out in enough detail. Once you’ve done that, go someplace where you can sit and watch people. Then look at somebody and make a good guess as to what they are thinking, based on your own journaling experiences. Then take the time to write out what you would say to them, by describing your own experiences but in terms of saying to them as if you are reading their mind.

Look for Shirt Term Practice Potential

You can also do this in reverse. Suppose there’s a cute barista you’d like to make an impression on. Go and wait in line and buy a cup of coffee. Then later go home and brainstorm any of your own experience that reminds you off. Working retail when its’ busy. Wanting to sit down and not being able to. Or anything else that would be applicable. Find a few memories and write them out. Then practice saying them out loud, quickly and effectively. Then next time you are buying coffee, say something simple like this:

I can tell you want a break, but you don’t know when you are going to get one because all these people keep coming in. I can also tell you know it will feel good when you finally get one.

Hit and Run Delivery

If you say this quickly, as if it just “hit you” and then quickly leave and sit down (instead of waiting for her to tell you how awesome you are) this will leave a powerful impression on her. This will have a much better impression than any other common compliment (you have gorgeous eyes, I love your hair, etc.) Compliments feel good, but they are quickly forgotten. A quick and effective cold reading statement will they deliver the feeling of, I see the real and genuine you, behind all that surface level stuff. This is the goal. To lift people up by noticing things about them nobody else does.

Adding Hypnotic Techniques

Hypnosis is almost always thought of as verbal technology. Something that is based on a certain collection of words. From only what we’ve covered before, this can’t be true. Since communication is less than 10% verbal, and more than 90% non-verbal, being able to hypnotize somebody must have much more to do with the non-verbal part than the verbal part. Let’s look at this from a different perspective to see just how important non-verbal communication is.

Crappy Movies

A recent invention that will help us understand this are the prevalence of streaming services. Up until ten years or so ago, we had to choose our movies carefully. We either had to buy a ticket or go to a rental shop or use a mail order service to get DVDs. Or we could choose to watch something on cable. However, the stuff on cable wasn’t quite like streaming, in that it wasn’t on demand. To the extent there were on demand services, you had to pay up front. One of the side effects of streaming movies is that they are tons available, very much like listening to the radio, but even more so. This means it is possible to decide to shut off a movie when you’re only a few minutes into it. So, to make sense of the power of non-verbal communication, think of the last few movies that you thought might be interesting, but ended up sucking really badly. So bad that you either turned them off and chose another one, or you tried really hard to be interested, but couldn’t. What, exactly, makes a movie suck so bad? For our purposes, one of those key reasons is terrible acting. Another actor reading the same lines, under the same direction would have done a much better job. So, the words aren’t the reason. The reason is how, specifically, the actor said those words. One common adjective that describes horrible acting is “wooden.” Wood doesn’t have any energy, or emotion. Wooden things are things like trees, tables and chairs that just sit there without emotion. Even if you happened to find yourself in a haunted forest and the trees came alive and started chasing you, they’d be pretty easy to run away from. They are, after all, trees, and they have deep roots, so even if they were able to pull their roots out of the ground and drag them along as they tried to chase you, it would still be easy to get away from them. Why do we describe haunted trees? To help you remember. When you deliver any cold reading techniques, don’t be wooden, like a haunted tree or like a horrible actor on Netflix. Your target will either run away from you or change the channel. Luckily, we’ve already gone over a fantastic technique to keep this from happening. To describe their experiences, you are cold reading while basing them on your own experiences. So, when you are talking to your restaurant friend about being overly worried about choosing the burrito combo instead of the sizzling fajitas, they will believe you since you are also describing your own memories. But there are a couple of other technical techniques you can use that will be very powerful.

Consciously Placed Pauses

When we pause during speaking, we do so for a couple of reasons. Most importantly is to stop and get our breath. Another one is after we’ve delivered a complete idea, and we want to pause and look around in hopes of getting a laugh or a nod of understanding from our friends. A much more powerful technique to use is to put pauses in the middle of ideas. For example, consider the following sentence:

I’m getting a feeling from you that you are worried about ordering the wrong thing. That you are afraid if the waitress comes over you might order something you don’t really want, just avoid being embarrassed.

If you said that slowly while remembering your own memories, it would be very congruent and believable. But with some carefully placed pauses, it will sound much more powerful. Where do you put the pauses? Before the main idea. Before ideas that you want to convey are very important to you. Consider the same sentence, but with some carefully placed pauses: We’ll use (P) to mean pause.

I’m getting a feeling from you that you are (P) worried about ordering the wrong thing. That you are afraid if the waitress comes over you might (P) order something you don’t really want just to (P) avoid being embarrassed.

The pauses, as they are placed in the statement above, will do two things. One is they are placed grammatically before the thought is finished. Kind of in the middle of an idea. You are.... …worried. You might… ...order something. Just to... ...avoid being embarrassed. They also come before the most important thoughts. The most important ideas. So those ideas that come after the pauses will be perceived as being more profound.

How to Deliver

When you put in pauses like that, it’s best to act like you are searching inside your own mind. So, when you say the statements after the pause, act like you’ve just been able to clarify them (after a bit of thought) by reading their mind. But in reality, you are breaking off eye contact, turning your head slightly (and giving them the appearance of using all your powers of intuition) to really maximize your own feelings, so when you say them, you deliver them with as much congruence and honesty as you can. However, you must be very careful if you are saying thing about them (and also about you) that could be seen as embarrassing. In the above example, this would be delivered after you’ve told the waitress to come back in a few more minutes when you’ve had time to think about what to order. To make sure they don’t think you are criticizing their deepest thoughts, say something like this:

Please, take as long as you need, there’s zero reason for concern. I only knew what I want because I’ve been here a few times before.

Practice Practice Practice

This will take a lot of practice. It’s simple in concept, but emotionally difficult. The reason is when we place strategic pauses within sentences like this, it increases the amount of focus and attention on us. Aside from cold reading, strategically placed pauses are a great way to increase response potential. To get people to shut off what they are thinking and pay as much attention to you, the speaker, as they can. For those who are more introverted, this can take some time getting used to. So, before you practice pauses in any cold reading scenarios, practice them with your close friends and family, whom you feel most comfortable with. The only rule is to put them in the middle of an idea. A useful guideline is to put them between verb and object, especially if the verb is a transitive verb. (A transi-what?) A transitive verb is one that requires an object. For example, “eat” is not necessarily transitive. If you say, “I’m going to eat,” that wouldn’t leave anybody hanging, since it makes sense on its own. On the other hand, if you said, “I’m going to drop,” it kind of leaves the listener waiting, since “drop” is almost always followed by an object. Especially if there is no context.

The other day, I was walking down the street and I dropped (pause - looking around) my sister off at the library!

You can have a lot of fun with these. The rule is simple. Find a list of transitive-only verbs. And use them in a sentence with a pause between the verb and the object. Once you get the hang of putting in pauses in regular sentences with regular people, you can use them in cold reading sentences with cold reading targets.

Meta Journaling

Up to now, we’ve used a couple of silly examples. Of using your intuitive powers to understand the deep inner emotional turmoil that comes from hastily ordering a burrito under pressure from a cute waitress. But if that silly example was actually delivered effectively (after doing the journaling and getting in touch with your own inner strife associated with ordering the wrong dish) it would still be very effective. They might not start asking you to predict the winner of the next world series, but they would certainly see you as very open and perceptive person. But what we’ll learn here will only be a bit more difficult, but it will be much more profound when it’s delivered.

Thoughts About Things

We all have thoughts about things. Thoughts about what major to choose. Thoughts about who to date on Friday night. Thoughts about what TV show or movie to watch. And if you take some time going into your brain and carefully describing your own thoughts about these common things, you’ll find that your own thoughts about these common things are fairly identical to all other people’s thoughts about common things. At the same time, this is very simple, but also kind of hard to accept. We all love the idea that we are unique. That we are special. But if you are going to be an effective cold reader, you’ll have to acknowledge that we really aren’t. Nobody gets happy or sad or angry when the waitress comes over before they’ve decided what to order. Most everybody feels a slight amount of pressure, which causes a slight amount of anxiety. In reality, there is really only two responses to that. One is to be assertive and say you need more time. The other is to allow yourself to order quickly without as much thought as you’d like. Which of these two responses is very predictable. You can tell right away if somebody is the type that would assertively ask for more time, or simply order something quickly without asking for more time. Nobody would get up and start singing. Nobody would pee their pants. We all have very common potential thought processes and responses to common situations. But since most of us never really think in terms of these commonly experienced situations, this provides an ideal source for cold reading. But if you get a little bit more complicated, you can potentially become a lot more mystical and effective.

Thoughts About Thoughts

Thoughts about thoughts are just as common as thoughts about things. And they are just as predictable as thoughts about things. But they are something that we are even less likely to think about. Which means if you can tell how somebody feels about something, and you can also accurately describe how they feel about that, they will be extremely impressed. This will be slightly difficult on two levels.

Internal Level

First, you’ll need to do some more journaling to explore this idea. Start with any thought you had about a thing. Then describe that thought like the previous exercise. Where you looked out a people who were financially better off than you. Let’s say you did that exercise, and when you looked out at people who were financially better off than you, you started to feel anxious. Anxious that maybe you might not ever make as much money as those other guys. But the thought that came after that first thought may have been frustration. Frustration because it seems unfair that they have money and you don’t. What might come next is anger. Anger that they have money, you don’t, and you might never have money because it’s unfair. The world is unfair, and some people get lucky and get rich, and others don’t, and that’s the way it is. The general rule is that whatever train of thoughts you have are very likely the exact same train of thoughts that others have. This requires you stay as an objective observer of your own thoughts. To do this, consider going through the same chain of thoughts over and over until they become familiar. Remember the outcome, which is to cold read others, and give them the impression that you very much understand and appreciate what they are thinking. Also remember that ideally, you want to make them feel better for having interacted with you. This can easily be done by finishing any cold reading interacting by delivering them any kind of prime directive idea. That they will someday be successful, they will do something that helps many people, and they will receive recognition and fame and fortune because of it. (We’ll go over many methods to do this later). For now, just get used to the most common second level or meta thoughts that come after first level or primary thoughts.

External Level

The part that will be a bit tricky as the exact sequence of meta thoughts can vary. For example, you might feel anxious, and then frustrated, and then angry. Somebody else might be angry, and then frustrated, and then anxious. And you won’t really be able to tell by reading their body language. For example, if you are sitting with somebody, and they glance over at some rich people (who are noisily jangling their jewelry) they might appear angry. But only from an external, body-language reading viewpoint, there’s no way to tell exactly where that anger lies in with all their other emotions. So, if you say something like this:

I sense you feel anxious. And that makes you feel frustrated because you might never have that kind of money. And that can make you feel very angry.

They might look at you funny. Even with three emotions, there are six different combinations. A-B-C. B-A-C. C-A-B. C-B-A. B-A-C. B-C-A.  And none of those will be consciously experienced by them. They’ll just kind of hit them all at once. They only emotion they’ll be aware of is the last emotion.

Not Only Negative Emotions

This is also very useful when you are having positive responses. You might see a pretty girl, who makes you feel lovesick. And that might make you remember the first time you fell in love. And that might cause you to think about that girl you’re going out with this Friday night. Internally, going through these will be very easy. It works the same on opinions. The first level emotions will always be followed by a few common second level emotions. But the order, and strength, and time spent on each emotion, as experienced by others will usually be subconscious. And since these kinds of things don’t necessarily lead to a decision (unlike the waitress scenario) they will stay in their mind. Which means it can be very difficult to deliver these in any cold reading technique that makes sense to them. We’ll learn to do that in the next chapter, using a very common sales technique which you will find to be very effective.

Eliciting ideas

The easiest way to sell something to somebody is to ask them what they are looking for, and then give it to them. This sounds obvious, but it’s not as common as you’d think. We can think of sales as being on two extremes. On one extreme, you have a bunch of stuff on the shelf, or listed on a website. Customers come and look around for what they want, pick something out, and pay for it. The other extreme is when the customers come into a shop and need to be sold by an experienced salesperson. These situations usually involve expensive items, and salespeople that are paid partially on commission. it’s also kind of understood that the shoppers don’t have as much information as the salespeople. In this situation, (which is one extreme of our continuum) there are two sides as well. One side the customers come in, and the salesperson pitches them with extreme persuasion and charisma. The customers listen to the sales pitch, maybe offer a few objections, and then either buy or not. The other extreme is when the salesperson takes his time to carefully find out what’s important to the customers. What kinds of things they are looking for. All the things that are important to them when thinking about a purchase. Then the salesperson chooses a product that closely matches their criteria, and essentially describes the product using their same criteria, matching their own words as closely as possible. This works very well. It’s based on taking the customer’s ideas, fully expanding them, and then finding a product and describing them back to them in their own words. To the extent the salesperson can do this effectively, and to the extent that they have a product that matches the customers’ criteria, then this will be sweet music to the customer’s ears. We will be using this same basic strategy when cold reading meta emotions.

Basic Structure

Suppose you’re with a friend, and they look over at some rich people. And you accurately read their body language to be anger. But you also know there is frustration and anxiety in there as well. You’ve got the basic recipe, but not the order or the proper ratios. One way would be to simply offer up all the emotions, without any sequence. All you need to do is to start with the main emotion they are feeling now.

I can tell you feel angry. It’s like some people have it easy, and never have to worry about money. Others always have to struggle. Sometimes that comes across as anger. Sometimes that comes across as frustration. Sometimes a mix between the two. Or sometimes just straight to anger.

Notice how you just state the emotions, as they simply exist on their own. As it is, those can either be descriptions of what they are feeling, or your own memories of your own journaling experience. But since most people don’t take the time to explore their own emotions as they pop up, that short statement will be recognized as accurate. Also, since you left it very open which emotions come first, and how long they stick around, all of them will be recognized.

If you just start off with reading their anger, you will only have a limited amount of effect. Because they might not really recognize all their emotions. You’ll need to use the sales technique and ask them. Have a brief conversation and ask them. Often, if you just pace how they are feeling, you’ll get some agreement. You don’t need to say something silly like, “You seem angry about those rich guys. Tell me more.” They will likely get offended that you are trying to be their counselor. One way is to simply describe the above (in italics) but be clear you are talking about yourself. But if you spend too much time talking about your emotions, they might start to try to make you feel better. It’s better to slowly bring them out of their emotions. Say things and invite them non-verbally to respond. Perhaps shake your head, nod in their direction and say something innocuous like, “rich people. They have no idea.” If your friend is clearly angry, they’ll offer up some response. This is something that is very subtle and will take a lot of practice. But if you can open their meta emotions, pace them, and then bring their emotions back to a positive state, it will have a very powerful, lasting and profound impact on them. Always remember our purpose. We aren’t tricking people into thinking we are psychics. We are using cold reading techniques which are based on understanding common human emotions. And we are doing so to help others feel better, and to get them to associate those better feelings with us.

Meta Meta Ideas

Now we’re getting into some high-level thinking. All of us will generally feel the same way around people who are wealthier than us. We have the same mix of emotions, more or less. But remember your job is to not only cold read them, but to uplift them. What kinds of things would you like to be told upon feeling those feelings? Chances are it’s something like this:

Those guys are rich, and you aren’t. That sucks. It makes you angry, and frustrated and anxious. But I can sense there is something about you. Maybe you haven’t discovered this yet, or maybe you are in the process of discovering this, but you will make your mark. There is something about you. Something special. Something you will use one day to make a magnificent contribution to society. And when you do that, you will get your due. People will recognize you. People will validate you. People will finally see your truth. And they will be very thankful. I don’t know how I know this, but this seems very true.

Tension and Release

Stories and music are all based on the simple idea of tension and release. Music is easiest to understand. Any song is a sequence of chord and discord. Mixtures of sounds that feel “right” and “finished” followed by sounds that feel “off” and “unfinished.” Stories are the same, be they novels, movies, TV shows or comic books. Good things are invariably followed by bad things, which are again followed by good things. We humans seem to crave this never-ending oscillation between tension and release. The stronger the tension, the more powerful and pleasing the release. The purpose of cold reading any negative emotions is to always follow it with some release. We aren’t quite to the point where we have a full-fledged strategy for every situation, but always keep in mind the end goal. To make people feel better for having interacted with you. All humans feel a mixture of pain and pleasure at any given time. Find wherever they are, accurately read it and feed it back to them, and make sure they end on a high note.

Practice Speaking in Meta Terms

Any way you can, get as much experience as you can speaking in meta emotions. This will take time. The idea is to get enough experience talking to as many different people in meta emotions as possible to be able to quickly calibrate people. After a while, you’ll find that the same types of people have similarly structured meta emotions. The first step is to explore your own meta emotions as much as you can through journaling. The next step is to speak about these meta emotions conversationally to get a read for how others experience them. This will take time. But it will allow for some very powerful and deep communication skills.

Meta Situations

So far, we’ve based the idea of cold reading on the premise that what we are feeling is structurally similar to what others are feeling. Our responses to situations are similar to others’ responses to those same situations. Since most people never take time to examine their own emotional responses to situations, taking the time to imagine our own responses will help us accurately read how others are responding. In a sense, we will be pacing their internal experiences. As we pace their internal experience (having done so to our own) they will feel as if we know them more than they know themselves. All this is based in the idea that we humans are much more like one another than we realize. Partly because we never talk to others about these deep and complex emotional ideas, and partly because we very much like the idea of being unique. The technique, then, is to not only accurately pace the sequence of emotions they are experiencing in any given situation, but to do so in a way that validates this sense of uniqueness. It would be a mistake to accurately pace their deep and complex inner emotions, and then say something like, “Yeah, that’s really common. Everybody feels that way.” In fact, this was a line delivered to the hero by a villain in a movie. The movie was based on a true story, about a struggling inventor who had created a cheaper and safer system to be used by nurses and other medical professionals when dealing with patients. Even though the nurses and other medical professionals, as well as manufacturers, recognized the value of the invention, he faced a lot of resistance from the medical and insurance companies. In a showdown of sorts with one of the hospital’s attorney’s (one of the many villains) the attorney said to him: (paraphrased)

I know you have a great desire to good. You feel as though you were put here for a reason, to do something magnificent. But you have to understand that is the commonest human feeling there is.

In a sense, the villain did the opposite of what we intend. He accurately read the emotions and desires of his subject, but instead of amplifying his dreams and feelings of uniqueness (something we all crave) he destroyed them by pointing out how common they are. Avoid this at all costs. The extent to which you can look inside your own mind and accurately describe your own emotions and relationships between those emotional feelings (primary and meta emotions) the more accurately you can describe them in others.

Look for Structural Similarities

After you’ve done some inner journaling on simple ideas (people who are wealthier, etc.) start to expand the ways you can elicit deep emotions, both good and bad. Here are some recommendations. Realize these are just a start. The more of these you can find within yourself, the more of these you can cold read within others and use make a lasting impact.

Things You Want That Inspire You

This is one of the best human feelings. To see something that you would like, but don’t have, but also inspires you to do more than you’ve done, so you can be more capable that you are now. For example, you might be riding a bicycle to work, or driving a used car without air conditioning, and you stop at a red light. You look next to you and see a nice car. A common response is to get angry at the owner since he’s got something you don’t. But another potential response (always use your natural and organic responses, never force them) is to see that car, and use that to inspire yourself. To have a thought that says, “When I finish my degree, and start earning real money, that’s the kind of car I’ll get.” Or if you see a rather homely looking fellow with a gorgeous woman. And you think to yourself, “When I do X and Y and get my stuff together, I’ll be dating girls just like that.” Once you find one or two of these situations, start to journal. Once you journal a couple of these, the structures will trigger other similar memories. Journal as many of these as you can. Once you go through a few of these memories by journaling as much information as you can, you’ll be able to read these deep and complex emotions in others. Now, you might be with a friend and they glance at somebody who pulls up in an expensive car. You might not think much about how they look at it. But after you do some journaling on your own experiences, their look and non-verbal body language will trigger those same memories. Because of that, you will genuinely know exactly what they are thinking, and will be able to describe it to them in great detail.

Things You Want That Frustrate You

Of course, this opposite feeling is much more common. We see people that have things or are in relationships that seem out of reach to us and will always seem out of reach to us. This is the reason for frustration, anger, anxiety. We want them, but we don’t believe we could get them. If we actually did believe they were within our reach, we would feel the way described in the situation described above. Because this is a much more common response, take plenty of time to journal your honest feelings. Don’t try and force yourself to feel the way you think you should, think the way you really do. Expand those feelings to meta feelings as honestly and accurately as you can. Find as many situations as you can. As with the situation described above, a few situations will trigger many other similarly structured memories. Be warned, this can make you very depressed. But it is necessary, as this is a common feeling in many people. We’ll learn later how to follow up these feelings with more positive ones. But until you go through the process several times, of feeling those negative emotions, and then purposely following them up with positive emotions (next chapter) you won’t be able to do it accurately in others.

Professional Psychics

As mentioned before, professional psychics are very much like therapists or doctors. The more they practice, the better they get. Imagine, just for the sake of argument, that you were a professional psychic. You had between ten and twenty customers per day. You were open six days a week. That means you would see, on average, 387 (15 customers per day, six days a week, 4.3 weeks per month) customers per month. In six months, you would see over two thousand people. This would give you a lot of practice finding out how people think, and what to say about how people think. All of this would be possible without ever looking inside your own brain. It would be very possible to be very closed off emotionally, yet still develop some world class cold-reading skills. After a few years you would have the non-verbal body language of others highly calibrated. You would have the demographics of your targets highly calibrated. You would be able to tell based on the gender, the brand of clothing, the way they look at you (or don’t) when they talk, exactly what’s on their mind, exactly what to tell them, and exactly how to tell them for the best effect. This is certainly one way to develop cold reading skills, through a lot of practice. It may seem very terrifying to look deep within your own emotions, and indeed it is. But it is also a very rapid shortcut to world class cold reading skills on the level of any recognized professional psychic. Think of it this way. The more you are willing to honestly examine your own emotions, in as much detail as you handle, the less practice you’ll need on other people. With enough practice looking at your own emotions, you can develop world class cold reading skills in a very short amount of time.

Create A Personal Angel

If the last chapter was scary and terrifying, this chapter will be the opposite. This is best done when you have spent some time looking at complex emotions that arise from looking at something you want, but don’t have (money, relationships, family, etc.) and don’t think you’ll ever get. This is the state most people are in. Few people have the money or relationships or career or family that they truly want. The ability to pace their frustrations, anger and fear, and then turn those feelings around to hope and a genuinely positive expectation for the future, is one that few people will ever know about, let alone develop the ability to demonstrate. Everybody has pain and anger. It doesn’t take any amount of fortitude or knowledge or insight to agree that life sucks. Misery has loved company since the dawn of time. But to pace their pain and transform their pain into hope and a positive expectation will turn you into a real-life super hero. As with the previous techniques, it all starts within your own brain.

The Storytelling Instinct

Humans have been telling each other stories since the dawn of time. Consider that one the main reason is not merely to pass the time, but to inspire us. Ancient humans had to go out hunting every day, which was no doubt dangerous and terrifying. The stories were likely very similar to stories we enjoy today, of good guys and bad guys. Of super heroes fighting and emerging victorious against super villains. This helped ancient humans when they went hunting or when they did other dangerous activities. Stories provided a means to invent believable best-case role models ancients could rely on in a time of need. That is the strategy we will be using. To create your own ideal role model to uplift you from your own despair as you explore your primary and meta emotions in those situations where you want something that you don’t believe you can get.

Custom Made Guardian Angel

This will seem strange. This will seem a bit goofy, and it may even seem like you are breaking some unwritten law of metaphysics. Remember the goal. To use this very technique to uplift others from their own despair. Since you have the same emotions as others, the ideal things you imagine hearing from your own custom-made angel will be very similar to the same ideas that will work on others. Let your imagination roam freely, but remember your job is to uplift others by reminding them of their abilities and potential future. Your own angel must deliver your own personal message in that same structure. The structure is anything that resonates with this:

I know how you feel. Right now, you feel like those things you want are going to be forever out of reach. That those things are only for those lucky people with better DNA, better connections and better luck. But I see something in you. Something that you maybe haven’t discovered. Something that I can sense will help you do something truly extraordinary. I don’t know how I know that, but I know it to be true. That one day you will do something great. Something magnificent that will help many. Something that will get you the recognition that you deserve. I can see that about you, and I know that someday you will too.

Obviously, the above statement is very vague. And since it’s vague, it doesn’t sound much different than a regular Barnum statement or a horoscope. It might make your target feel a little better, but it will be a little too vague to affect any lasting changes. The goal is to connect to the cause-effect machine in their brain. Connect that knowing to as many real things you can in their lives. Remember the cause-effect doesn’t really have to be accurate. Our brains really can’t tell the difference between causation and correlation. Since you’ll be doing this to your own brain first, you can play around. This will take a lot of courage. For some reason, it feels good for us silly humans to wallow in misery. This is a leftover strategy from being children. When we are children, the longer we wallow in misery, the more likely an adult will eventually come around and fix things. As grownups, we no longer have that luxury. To be an effective cold reader, you must first fix yourself before you can encourage and uplift others.

Start with Things That Are True About You

Start with things that are true about you. Actual skills and abilities that you have. Things that, if everything worked out perfectly, would lead you to getting that which you crave. It doesn’t need to seem easy or guaranteed, it just seems plausible enough to put into a cause-effect statement. Come up with as many of these truths about your present condition now, skills abilities, etc., and write them all down. Then come up with your angel statement.

Angel Statement

The angel statement has to start off with what is observably true about you. It has to believably lead to a much better future than now. This can’t be based on magic. This can’t be based on somebody else showing you something and making everything easy for you. And most importantly, this can’t be based on anybody just deciding to give you what you want just because. Your ideal future must be based on the laws of nature (physics, chemistry, biology) and human nature, namely economics. You must get everything you want, but it must be a result of your future skills and abilities. You don’t have to see a clear connection between now and then, but those elements must be present. A clear set of skills to start with, and a time in the future when you are getting everything you want that adheres to the laws of science-nature and human-nature. Then imagine an angel telling you this in the best way possible. The angel, of course, exists outside time and can see exactly how things will turn out for you. Play around with several angel statements. This will take time, and this will definitely be a work in progress.

You Must Believe Your Angel Statement

If you believe your angel statement, then your target will believe your cold-reading statement. If you have to make an effort to believe your angel statement, then your target will have to make an effort to believe your cold reading statement. The more accurate and detailed your angel statement is, the more accurate and detailed a cold reading statement can be to whomever you choose to deliver it to. However positive and uplifted you make yourself feel with your angel statement, the more positive and uplifted you will make others feel with your cold reading statement. Always think of the ultimate goal. To walk up to a stranger (if you like) accurately read how they are feeling, then deliver a very powerful cold reading angel statement to them. Do this and they will never forget you.

Practice Out Loud

The transition from your own negative thoughts, transformed to your own positive expectations of your own future, to the actual cold reading delivery to others is practice. Practice out loud, and practice alone. Remember the blurred reality theory. When you are giving them a cold reading, you are also describing what is happening inside your own mind. From the humans-as-emotional-resonators model, this will be seen by them as you accurately reading their own emotions. This is the area of communication where practicing alone is as good, if not better, than practicing with others. Even with public speaking, you need to be able to read the audience effectively. Cold reading is a unique form of communication. You won’t need to be looking them directly in the eye (more on why later). You’ll be looking off to the side and acting as if you are reading what is inside their mind. But in reality, you are simply delivering what you know exists inside your own mind. And since you have accurately read their non-verbal body language and facial expressions, you have a good idea that is precisely what they are thinking. Because you are describing what is inside your mind, it will be absolutely congruent and truthful. They will therefore be paying attention to you with great interest. You will be using a hypnotic pacing and leading system (more later) where they are following you, and you are leading them. You are looking off to the side, describing what you know to be true, since you’ve taken the time to practice this. You will be looking off to the side, and carefully using language (more later), that will convince them you are really talking about THEIR inner emotions. As soon as you switch from pacing their pain, to leading their fear (angel reading) they will be very eager to follow you. This is the only communication that will not require much attention to their body language and facial expressions on your part. This means the level of comfort you achieve at home will be very close to the real thing. In fact, you may find that it’s much easier to do this for real. When we practice, we tend to imagine the worst. (Rejection, etc.) But when you deliver this in person, the real results will always be much better than practice.

Practice Pacing

A good way to practice is to look for real life opportunities. When you notice a friend looking at something or somebody, and you know precisely what they are thinking (because of the situation and your own journaling experience). This is a good opportunity to practice later at home. Just start off how you normally would. You can add refinements and other language technology later.

I know what you are thinking. You are looking at that gorgeous girl, and you are thinking she’d never go for a guy like you.

Practice expanding the pacing statement as much as you can. Go into as much detail as you can. As you practice (while imagining you are talking to your friend) fully imagine how you feel in those situations.

Practice Transitioning

This is when you start to add in things that are true about them (and you) in the present. The way they talk to other people. The way they’ve handled difficult situations. Always remember that any cause-effect statement doesn’t have to be built on logic. Plenty of experiments have shown (in addition to the poor six months old being tricked into thinking the universe has broken) that humans don’t need any kind of logic. Only a barely plausible cause-effect statement. So, take any positive attributes about your friend (and you as well) that they have.

Angel Statement

Then deliver the angel statement. Make it as long and detailed as possible. The structure is simple and can be repeated with as many causes as you want. The ultimate future is doing something fantastic, which will get them recognition and validation and massive social status. And with massive social status comes all the money, sex, love and relationships they (and you) could ever want. Remember, this idea of getting more sex and money due to higher social status is programmed into all of us by evolution. The basic structure is as follows:

Because of X, you will do great things. And those great things will help many people. And because you are going to help many people, you will get plenty of social status. And that social status will get you all kinds of sex and love and money and relationships.

Why Will This Work?

Whatever any of us wants, but believes we can’t get, is somehow linked to status, love (sex, romance, relationships, family), or a financial idea. We are all programmed to understand that more social status will get us more of all those things. We all have a basic cause-effect generator in our brain which (for better or for worse) will make us believe pretty much anything. We all feel the same primary and meta emotions in the same situations. All these ideas put together will be a very powerful and uplifting delivery system to anybody who is in any kind of emotional pain. The very basic formula is as follows:

I can tell you think life sucks. (You know this because you agree that life sucks for the same reason they do).

But you can do certain things. (You tell them things that they must agree are true.)

These things will cause you to do better things. (Cause effect generator).

Those better things will lead to massive social status. (Cause effect generator and universal human desire).

That social status will get you massive amounts of sex and money. (An idea instinctively programmed into all humans).

Therefore, that thing you want now but can’t get, you’ll easily get someday. (pacing, cause effect, instinctive triggers).

Delivery Method Important

You can do all this as a pure pep talk. As it’s written out above, it can be given as a pep talk, but as a pep talk that is true for every human on Earth. This is generally the kind of stuff you hear in motivational books and motivational seminars. It kind of makes sense, but at the same time it’s delivered to anybody who can afford a ticket, so it’s not really personal. The power of cold reading comes when you can deliver the above structure, but with some added elements.

Added Elements of Power

One thing you must always keep in mind is you must add in something about their uniqueness. If you connect their big and bright future to any idea of their uniqueness, especially in a cause-effect statement, it will be a kajillion times more powerful than even the most famous motivational speaker. Basically, the uniqueness formula is like this:

I can see something about you. You can do X, and that is unique. Very few people can do X like you can do X. Because of that, you will have a very bright future. And that will get you tons of social proof, sex, and money.

For the rest of this guide, we will be focusing on the micro language patterns and techniques to deliver the idea of uniqueness. The patterns from covert hypnosis, that, when wrapped around the above structure (and your willingness to explore your own emotions, meta emotions, and construct a vivid collection of personal angel statements) will give you an incredible amount of cold reading power.

Pacing and leading

We’ve talked about how squirrely human consciousness is. That our conscious minds are usually a few split seconds behind the action. Our mind-body system perceives something and begins to respond, and then our conscious mind gets involved. Perhaps because our instinctive ego (a powerful social instinct) needs to believe we are too important to watch things happen, it convinces us that we make things happen. In order to do this, it has to come up with a plausible reason for us doing whatever it is we did. This is hard to watch inside your own brain. As an experiment, consider reading the following out loud:

I am saying these words out loud. But it is not really me who is saying them. My consciousness is watching me say them, but it needs to make up a story that has my consciousness as the one deciding to say these words. But in reality, my consciousness is watching me say these words, and pretending it is the one doing the saying.

To make your brain even spin around more (and a great way to create a drug free buzz with your friends) is to describe this process out loud, in your own words. Switch between thinking that your consciousness is actually choosing the words and some other part of you is choosing the words and your consciousness is watching you say them, but a split second after you say them (maybe while the word is on its way out of your mouth) it rewrites your very short term memory so you can pretend you were the one choosing to say them.

Cialdini Laws

This also works with Cialdini laws which we discussed earlier. Social proof, authority, commitment and consistency. If you walked down the street, and you saw a huge crowd of attractive people standing around a new shop, you’d go over and take a look. And if some authority figure was handing out numbers, (1-999, for example) you would grab one. Then further assume the authority figure came out (to the cheers of the crowd) and said they would read off ten lucky numbers, and the ten lucky numbers would get to buy whatever gadget they were selling. Now imagine they started reading off numbers, and whoever’s number was called was ecstatic, and their friends treated them like a mini celebrity. And the last number they called was your number. Imagine that now. Imagine everybody looking at you as if you were the luckiest human on Earth. Imagine that authority figure offering you the last available gadget for $50. You buy it and take that gadget into your hand. Imagine the crowd all gazing at you like you are some kind of super hero rock star, because you were lucky enough to get your number called. (For the sake of this experiment, imagine you can’t resell it or give it to anybody). Now imagine it’s a couple weeks later, and you still haven’t quite figured out what the gadget is or what it does. Your friend comes over and asks about it. You tell him you paid $50 bucks for it, but you still don’t know what it does. He asks you why. What do you tell him? In the moment, it seems totally logical. And most of the time, we can come up with a reason, after the fact, of why we do things. If this were an actual device that actually did something, you’d explain that as the reason you bought it. But consider that most of the time, us silly humans do things for reasons that are both instinctive and outside of our conscious awareness. Only after we decide to do them does our conscious minds get involved and help us to come up with plausible sounding reasons why we, our conscious ego, decided to do something.

Pacing and Leading

This is what we will leverage with pacing and leading. This will be a purely verbal technique. Pacing is when you say something that is absolutely, irrefutably true. With practice, you’ll be able to look at somebody and say many things that are absolutely true. For example, if you were sitting across the table from somebody in a semi-crowded coffee shop with music playing in the background, after you’ve both purchased your coffee, the following statements would be absolutely true.

You are sitting there

You can feel the chair

You can hear other people talking

You can hear the sounds of coffee being prepared

You can hear the music in the background

You are listening to the words I am saying

You have recently purchased some coffee

Your coffee is cooler now than when they handed it to you

Leading Statements

Leading statements are things you want to be true but aren’t true yet. Usually these are things you’d like them to think. This will take a lot more practice than coming up with pacing statements. Pacing statements are simply based on your observation. Leading statements need to be chosen carefully, if you lead them to think something too far removed from what they are doing, they won’t follow you. For example, the following pacing-leading statement is too much:

You are sitting there listening to me talk and you are starting to think about giving me all your money.

A much better one would be this:

You are sitting there listening to me talk and you are starting to feel like taking a sip of your coffee.

To make it even easier, precede the leading statement with a word like maybe, that indicates it’s only a possibility.

You are sitting there listening to me and you might be starting to think about taking a sip of coffee.

Pacing and Leading Magic

The absolutely fantastic thing about pacing and leading is once you lead them effectively, that is the next pace. Since they are doing it, you can simply move on to the next thought. If the lead is very close to the pace, (from a thought to thought standpoint) they won’t remember it as you leading their thoughts. They will remember the event as them controlling and deciding upon the chain of their thoughts. In a way, this is leveraging their ego in your favor. Imagine if you had a twenty-minute conversation with them. Where you started with a simple pacing-leading statement like this:

You are sitting there listening to me talk and you might be starting to wait for me to shut up, so you can take a sip of coffee. (Be quiet, wait and watch them take a sip of coffee). And as you can taste that coffee, you might remember the last time you enjoyed something warm....

Twenty minutes later you are getting them thinking about quitting their job and joining you on a cross country trip to sing folk songs on college campuses (for example). From your perspective, this was your plan all along. With careful enough pacing-leading language, and enough cold reading elements built in (leveraging their desire for social status, etc.) this would be very possible. Our point is not to illustrate how simple it is to con people into doing crazy things like being folk singers. But if you did indeed pull this off, your unfortunate target would later remember this as their idea. And if you carefully put in plenty of ego leveraging elements (you are unique, you are special, you will gain social status, etc.) they will actually defend their decision to become a folk singer.

Three Elements

The only three elements needed are pacing, leading and their ego that needs to think it’s in charge more than it really is.

Practice Pacing and Leading

The easiest way to practice this is to watch people. Sit and first write down ten or twenty pacing statements about the people you see sitting around you. Then write out one leading statement that follows each pacing statement. Put a maybe word before the leading statement. And put the word and before the leading statement. Do that enough so you can look at somebody, and quickly come up with a pacing and leading statement (with the and and the maybe) without needing to write anything down.

Longer and Longer

This will require plenty of practice. When one pacing and leading statement becomes easy, go for two. When two becomes easy, go for three, etc. Eventually you’ll need to practice with real people. It’s very unlikely somebody will sit there and listen to deliver more than a couple pacing and leading statements. That’s good. If they start talking, this means they are enjoying the process, and they want to talk about their experiences. Just take whatever they say and feed it back into the system. Every time somebody says something, that is just another thing to pace.

Post Journal

Every time you try this with a real person, write down the pacing and leading statements you used, what they said, up to the point where you got stuck. If you think about it, you’ll quickly think of a way to take whatever they said and use that as a pacing statement you could fold back into your pacing-leading sequence.

Cause Effect Language

One of your biggest tools in your cold reading toolbox is the idea of cause and effect. Cause effect is not only one of the deepest mysteries of thought, but of reality itself. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy must always increase. Meaning systems, as they move forward in time, must increase in disorder. But it’s not quite a law, meaning it can’t really be derived. It can only be observed and described. Things like order and disorder are kind of squirrely concepts to begin with. But essentially, physicists say that things were more organized in the past, and they will be less organized in the future. Some systems might become more organized in the future temporarily, but the overall entropy of the entire universe is always increasing. They say this is related to the flow of time. And the flow of time is directly connected to the idea of cause and effect. The cause must happen before the effect. As we’ve discussed before, Mother Nature seems to have figured to use the better safe than sorry rule when programming our brains. We just assume two things are linked by cause and effect, even if they aren’t. When you use the simple conjunction and, most will assume, even subconsciously, that what came before the and is causing what comes after the and. For example:

You are reading this sentence and beginning to imagine what it will be like when you master all these skills.

It’s very hard to not think about mastering these skills when you read the phrase, master these skills.

This is true when you speak. In a very real way, cold reading works by carefully leading the chain of thoughts in your target. But because of our behind-the-curve conscious mind (after the fact storyteller) they will later remember those thought processes as theirs. And because you knew their thoughts, you must have some kind of clairvoyant ability. They will remember that you did most of the talking. They will remember thinking the things you said they were thinking. They will have two choices to explain what happened:

Choice One is their mind is really under your control. This means their ego loses, and they are not in control of their own destiny.

Choice Two is that you actually have the ability to read their mind.

Given the massive importance we put on being in control of our own destiny, our belief in free will, etc. choice two is far preferable to choice one. You can significantly enhance this by building in the idea (within your pacing and leading chain of thoughts) they are in control of their thinking.

You are reading this sentence now, and this might lead you to imagine all the other things you’ve read in your life. As you think about that, you might recall what Mark Twain said about reading. That reading is an indication of being in complete control of your thoughts, and your destiny. And somebody like you is unique enough, due to those experiences you might remember now, to truly understand this. Perhaps more than most people. And because you get this in a way that many will not comprehend, you can decide now to become truly dedicated to mastering the art of cold reading, so you can uplift others in ways they can’t yet imagine.

And

And is the simplest word that indicates cause and effect. Start to notice how other people use and as an indication of cause and effect.

Because

This is obvious, sometimes. But sometimes people drop it in without both sides, and it still works. Even with something self-evidently silly it still works.

Because I want to, can we watch Love Boat tonight, honey?

The More...The More

This is a powerful two step cause-effect indicator. It’s very slippery and useful in extended pacing and leading thought chains.

The more you read this sentence, the more you might want to practice cold reading on strangers tonight.

The more you think about cold reading, the more you start to wonder about all the ways you can use these ideas to make enough money to quit your job.

It even works to jump start the pacing and leading process. Notice the above statement. The first statement is really a lead, not a pace. (think about cold reading). It sounds like a conditional statement:

If you think about cold reading, then you’ll...

When you start a sentence with “the more you...” it’s expected there is another half coming. So, the listener will act as if it’s an “if then” statement. And if you make the second half of the statement something you’re pretty sure anybody would want to do (make enough money to quit their job) they will very much want to accept the entire statement. And due to the magic of our conscious mind as after-the-fact storyteller, your listener will remember the suggestion think about cold reading as if it were theirs, and not yours. For example:

The more you think about making the decision to practice cold reading, the more you can start to look forward to all those supermodels you can easily seduce.

The more you think about making the decision to practice cold reading, the more you’ll truly be able imagine all the money you can easily make.

The more you imagine how powerful these cold reading techniques are, the more you can see yourself as being a secret agent angel from heaven, sent to spread happiness and pleasure to all lucky enough to interact with you.

Practice Practice Practice

Writing these patterns out is the best way to drill these into your brain. You can do these as an add-on to the previous chapter’s homework. Find a place to sit and watch people. Find a target. Write out a few pacing statements. Figure out a couple of neutral, leading statements. Things you want them to think. Then think of a positive outcome that is a believable consequence to those neutral leading statements. Then write them out using “the more...the more...” pattern.

As you sit there reading your book and listening to the music in the background, you might think about getting up and taking a walk outside. And the more you think about getting up and taking a walk outside, the more you can imagine having a chance meeting with that one person you’ve been dreaming about. That one person that is going to help in that way you’ve been hoping for.

Be Creative

Don’t be shy. This is only writing practice, and you don’t need to show any of this to anybody. Start simple and try to get as crazy as you can. The only rule is each effect must be plausible based on the cause. Add in some universal human desires, based on your own journaling and primary emotions. The part in the example above (that one person you’ve been dreaming about...help you in the way you’ve been hoping for) are things you can dig out of your own brain as things we all want. Then you can put them into structure language, so they are more easily deliverable to others in a believable way. The best thing to do is to just start writing and push the limits of what you think is possible.

Hypnotic Patterns

Recall the idea of going into your own mind and describing in detail the things you want. For example, you might look out and see an attractive person. This is something you want. It might inspire you if you are in a place where you can reasonably expect to have a partner like that in the future. Or it can cause pain if you are in a place where you don’t believe you’ll ever get a partner like that. This “seeing something and being inspired” or “seeing something and feeling frustrated” was the primary emotion. We then talked about how to look at meta emotions to this primary emotion. Since all humans share these same feelings and ideas, to the extent you could do this within yourself, you could accurately “cold read” them in others. In this chapter we’ll take those ideas and treat them in another way.

Structure Language of Universal Desires

Let’s say you see somebody that pays for their coffee with a hundred they pull out of a thick roll of hundreds. They’ve got on expensive clothes and plenty of bling. This could either inspire your or demoralize you, depending on where you are. Or you could use this to elicit a few universal desires. Things like more money, or a better career. This can further lead to things like further recognition for our talents and skills and contributions. One way to see this is from an ancient, instinctive level. All of us are preprogrammed to accomplish great feats so we can get great rewards. The great feats are killing big animals, or finding large orchards, or pulling in large nets filled with fish, or finding a huge cache of edible roots. All of these represent direct value to our tribe. Our family and friends whom with we share our entire lives. The rewards are social recognition, increased social status and sex, or attention from sexy people that will hopefully lead to sex. Everything we want in this modern life is directly based on those ancient instincts. You can begin exploring this by seeing the real things that remind you of the things you want. This commonly causes pain, because when we see something we want, that presupposes it is something we don’t have. And recognizing something we don’t have, just by pure probability, has a fifty-fifty chance of making us feel good and hopeful, or a fifty-fifty chance of demoralizing us. So, this won’t be an easy exercise. As previously, keep the end goal in mind. For this particular exercise, simply write out the things you want. Not how they make you feel. This will be very basic, like more money, a better-looking partner, a better paying job, better or more recognition for your contribution at work and at home, more appreciation from those you work with and live with. Once you write down the things you want, imagine how they are related to our ancient instincts. Since they are related to our ancient instincts, everybody else on planet Earth will have those same desires, just as surely as they will get hungry if they don’t eat for a few hours.

Translate into Structure Language

Once you’ve got the thing described, turn it into structure language. This will be easy once you get the hang of it. For example, if you see a cute girl, and you recognize you’d like to have a cute girl in your life, there are plenty of ways to describe that unfulfilled and common need.

I need to get laid

I wish I had a girlfriend

I wish I had somebody to hang out with

I wish I had somebody who understood me

I wish I had somebody to share my life with

Once you’ve got plenty of these types of statements listed out, start to take them out of the first person and put them into the third person, and just describe them in the abstract (with a wish or want verb attached to them).

a partner

somebody to hang out with

somebody that understands you

somebody to share your life with

The Magical You

If you were a serious writer following a style guide, you wouldn’t use you. Instead of saying this:

When you see a pretty girl, it makes you sad.

You would write something like this:

When one sees a pretty girl, it makes one sad.

Using the pronoun one instead of you is more professional and academic. But in conversations, it works perfectly. Because the person listening to you gets to choose which one they want. Especially if you start off speaking abstractly. You can start rambling about some vague idea, and then start to blend in a lot of cause-effect statements, along with plenty of “the more...the more...” statements, all with the ambiguous you. It won’t be long before your target starts to imagine you are speaking directly to them with your powers of clairvoyance.

Example

Suppose you’ve started off with a few pacing statements. And you’ve got some intel on your target, either by your keen observation, or carefully elicited through your conversation that they are currently without a partner. So, you have a pretty good idea they would be open to meeting the ideal person.

Dating is pretty difficult these days, isn’t it? It mean, it’s funny how we all want somebody, but at the same time many people have given up looking. But the more you realize this (pacing) the more you start to wonder (leading) if there isn’t a better way. I mean we all hear those stories (pacing). You (ambiguous) are out minding your own business, you’ve (ambiguous?) given up actively looking, and then bam. You (ambiguous?) meet this person. And this person reminds of you that ideal person (universal desire) that you’ve been thinking off. That ideal person (universal desire) that you had almost given up hope finding. That ideal person that everybody hopes you’ll (ambiguous?) meet some day. You (specific, non-ambiguous) ever wonder if that’s really true?

This whole story is essentially one Barnum statement. Everybody wants to meet an ideal person. Everybody has given up on dating. Everybody has heard stories. Everybody either knows somebody or has the experience of meeting somebody when they least expected to meet somebody. None of this is earth shattering. But if you deliver to them as if you are discovering this for the first time, and if you are accurately reflecting your own congruent, inner feelings, with the added you’s and carefully placed eye contact, they’ll end up feeling that you really get them. That you really see them in a way few other people do. And the last question is totally ambiguous (is that really true?) But it will make them think. And they will find whatever truths in that statement they want, and they will agree that it is true. True in a very real and personal way.

Not A Pick-Up Routine

Now, the above might sound like a sneaky pickup routine, and while you can use cold reading techniques to pick up people, it’s much better as a very long game strategy. The above example would best be followed by a discussion of real relationship prospects. You could talk to your target about people they might know that could be potential partners. You could share with them potential people in your life that are potential partners. We give this as an example because finding an ideal relationship partner is one of the primary universal desires today.

Homework

Come up with an equivalent set of statements, but instead of using an ideal partner as the universal desire, use getting genuine validation for your actions instead. When you are finished, put it through your angel filter. If you heard the statement from another person, would it ring true?

Linguistic Presuppositions

A very powerful way to deliver cold reading statements is through something called linguistic presuppositions. These are something we use normally, but we tend to use these unconsciously and defensively. We’ll see both why and how in a moment. First, a basic overview of their structure.

Hidden Ideas

Sentences contain a lot of ideas that are simply assumed to be true. If there is anything in a sentence that is unclear, we can ask about it. But depending on how the idea is situated within the sentence, asking about it can be easy or difficult. For example, imagine this sentence:

Yesterday I saw a kerpuffle.

If you heard this, you would probably ask, “what’s a kerpuffle?”

But consider this sentence:

Yesterday I noticed I’d been neglecting my kerpuffle, so I took it in for maintenance, but the cute girl that I like wasn’t working so I wasn’t sure to do.

This is much longer, much more detailed, and the idea of a “kerpuffle” is not the main focus. The main focus seems to be on the missing girl. Now imagine that sentence said in a group of people, and all of them seemingly nodding in understanding. This would make it seem much less easy to ask, “Uh, what, exactly, is a kerpuffle?”

Natural Habitat

We tend to use these structures subconsciously when we talk about ideas we believe to be true, we would like others to believe they are true, but we wouldn’t feel comfortable enough defending the ideas if they were questioned directly. Without going into too much detail, (that would take an entire guide on its own) most of our beliefs are false. Very few of our beliefs could stand direct scrutiny from others. Most of the things we believe to be true came through social proof and authority. So, when we use these beliefs conversationally, especially around people we don’t know very well, we tend to slip these beliefs in using linguistic presuppositions.

Wounded Arm Syndrome

It is somewhat like how you’d behave if you hurt your arm. Suppose you had recent surgery on your left elbow. You’d just had your cast taken off, and your arm is without any obvious bandages or slings. But it is still kind of tender and weak, so when you go about your daily behaviors, you would unconsciously protect that weak arm. Similarly, our beliefs that we don’t feel comfortable defending directly, we tend to unconsciously protect them by hiding them in these linguistic presuppositions.

Positive Use

In order to train your brain to use these, you’ll need to do some writing. Think of these like martial arts moves. In order to train them into your muscle memory, you’d have to do hundreds or even thousands of repetitive practice moves before they became second nature. These are similar. Luckily, burning these into your “brain muscle memory” won’t take nearly as time as it would to learn any martial arts move through traditional training. But we do need to posit a warning. Most of us use these most of the time. Most of us use these to cover up beliefs we believe to be true, but we don’t want questioned. We also use these to cover up many other ideas we don’t want questioned. These include things we are afraid of, assumptions we make about others, and many other seemingly negative things. Once you train your mind to see these, it will be like having X-ray vision into the minds of everybody around you. While this will significantly enhance your cold reading skills, it may also cause some people you think fondly of now to fall slightly out of favor. They say that ignorance is bliss, and if you take the time to drill these patterns, you’ll see what that means. But please, don’t let that deter you. The gains of being able to use these to consciously slip any idea into their mind will provide far more benefits to seeing the glaring skeletons all your friends believe are safely hidden away.

Sales Example

One thing that will make any product more desirable is social proof. Online and off, you’ll see plenty of social proof evidence everywhere. But sometimes this isn’t so easy. When buying things online, we can check the reviews, both average number of stars and the total number of reviews. All else equal, we’d all prefer a heavily socially proofed product than one that has few reviews, even if both products are otherwise identical. We’ll imagine a scenario with a salesperson and a high-ticket item, that needs to be viewed up close and in person.

No Linguistic Presuppositions

We’ll first take a look at a salesperson who doesn’t know anything about linguistic presuppositions. Suppose he said something like this:

This car is really popular. Many people have purchased it and they are all very happy with it.

As soon as he said that, you would immediately wonder if he was telling the truth or not. Mentally, this is very easy.

This car is really popular.

Really? Is it?

Many people have purchased it and are happy with it.

Oh, is that so?

These are very simple statements that are out there in the open. Since they are out there in the open, the customer can ask about them. It may be what the salesperson thinks of as popular is not what the customer thinks of as popular.

Linguistic Presuppositions

Now consider an enlightened salesperson who has spent time studying linguistic presuppositions. Consider this statement.

This is one of our more popular models. One of the reasons it’s been popular for so long is the engine is in the top of its class. Here, let me show you (open the hood).

This puts the idea that the car is popular deeply within the sentence. The main idea is to get the customer to the engine, something that is filled with facts and figures that can’t be left to interpretation. Let’s take a look at the actual presuppositions:

One of the reasons it’s popular.

It doesn’t mention them, but it’s presupposed that it is popular for more than one reason. Just think about these two sentences:

This car is popular.

One of the reasons this car is popular is the engine.

The first one is easy to question, even mentally.

The second one is very difficult to question, because there isn’t even a specified number of reasons why it’s popular, let alone what those reasons are. Since these are vague ideas, the mind will fixate on these vague ideas (the other mysterious reasons why the car is popular) which will more deeply embed the presupposed idea that the car is popular.

Not A Magic Trick

Of course, one linguistic presupposition won’t sell a car. But consider a twenty or thirty-minute sales pitch. One straightforward, listing all the features and benefits. Another filled with linguistic presuppositions cleverly embedding plenty of ideas about the benefits of the product. Further consider that one sales commission from one car is $500. If taking the time to become conversationally fluent in linguistic presuppositions meant the salesperson would sell one more car per week, that would be a yearly increase of $25K per year (assuming a couple weeks off for vacation). There aren’t a lot of things you can study, on your own, in our own time, that will increase your salary that much. You will get similar rewards in cold reading by taking the time to become conversationally fluent with linguistic presuppositions. Next chapter, we’ll go over the most powerful linguistic presuppositions, and then we’ll show you how to use them most effectively.

Strongest Presuppositions

Below are the most powerful linguistic presuppositions. To understand them, it’s best to just write them out. Once you write them out a few times, using them like the examples, you’ll start to get a feel for them. Think of these just like learning boxing or martial arts moves. It’s best to just start drilling them instead of trying to understand them. Once you drill them into your brain sufficiently, you’ll start to see them and use them naturally.

Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs

luckily, fortunately, happily, remarkably

Luckily, since have already made a commitment to yourself to become the best cold reader on earth, your future is going to be spectacular!

Luckily... (thing you want to be believed as true)

Comparative As

as....as...

Few things are as powerful as learning to deliver powerful and wonderful cold readings to people to make them feel fantastic.

Few things are as... (good thing) as (what you want to be believed as true)

Factive Verbs and Adjectives

realize, aware, know, regret, believe

Once you realize the true power of cold reading, you’ll never see communication the same way again.

Once you realize (thing you want to be believed) then you’ll (thing they will most likely want)

Relative Clauses

noun + who, which, that

People who study cold reading make way more money and have tons more sex than normal humans.

People who (do what you want them to do) (have positive things)

Change of Time Verbs

begin, start, stop, etc.

When you begin to see the power of cold reading, you’ll want to keep practicing until you are the most famous cold reader on earth.

When you begin (thing you want them to do) you will (thing you know they will want to do)

Pseudo Cleft Sentence

what is X about Y is...

What is amazing about cold reading is that it’s based purely on science, but all your friends will think you have super human skills of telepathy.

What is fantastic about (thing you want them to think or believe) is that (positive trait you know they want)

Subordinate Clause of Time

after, before, since, while

After you become skilled in cold reading, getting jobs and dates will be a piece of cake.

After you (do the thing you want them to) you will (get the thing you know they want)

Cleft Sentences

It is... It was....

It is the power of the cause effect generator that lives in our brains that gives cold reading its effectiveness.

It is (something that is true) that makes (something you want them to believe) + (good thing)

Quantifiers

only, even, just, except

It will only take a few weeks of consistent practice and you will develop world class skills that will open all kinds of new doors for you.

It will only take (small cost) to get (massive benefit)

Ordinal Numbers

first, second, third, etc.

The second thing you’ll discover about cold reading is it makes you naturally charismatic and in-demand socially.

Any use of any ordinal number presupposes the rest of the ordinal numbers.

Complex Adjectives

new, old, previous, present

Any old ideas you had about any difficulties of cold reading can be forgotten once you see how easy it is to transform people’s thinking.

Any old ideas about (old bad thing) can vanish when you see how (positive new thing) can help you.

Some Quantifiers

all, each, every, some, few, many,

Everybody who practices these techniques finds plenty of new ways to use them that other people will never consider.

Everybody who (thing you want them to do or believe) finds that (access to desired thing is easy).

Change of Place Verbs

come, go, enter, depart, leave

When you leave behind old ways of thinking, you’ll find out just how simple it is to give accurate cold readings to nearly anybody within minutes, which will be profoundly impressive and appreciated.

When you leave behind (old thinking you don’t want) you can enter into (new thinking you want them to have).

Practice Practice Practice

These are very much like physical skills. Reading about them won’t help you learn them any more than you can learn boxing by watching somebody box. But if you take some time to write these out, each day, they will slowly become more natural and easier. To start, just take the above examples and start to make modifications. Combine them with any of the cause - effect language. Don’t expect miracles, it may take a couple of days before you can come up with fresh sentences on your own. If you like, simply copy the sentences above, just as they are.

Persuade Yourself

When writing these out, act as if you are writing a sales letter to yourself. The thing you want to persuade yourself to do or believe is anything about cold reading. The thing you will get when you master cold reading is the same thing every other human wants. More money, more sex, more social status. Consider writing one round for each. More cold reading equals more money. More cold reading equals more sex. More cold reading equals more social status. This will trigger your ancient instincts to make a deep causal connection between learning cold reading and getting the prime directive desires of all humans. It will also train you how to use them with others. Of course, when writing a sales letter to yourself, you can be as blatant as you want. Actually write things like more sex or more freaky sex or even more freaky sex with my next-door neighbor. (Just be sure not to show anybody!) The idea when writing these out is twofold. One is to train the linguistic structures into your brain. And two is to leverage them just like you’ll leverage them with others. But connecting them with sex, money and increased social status. Of course, when you use these on others you won’t be convincing them to learn cold reading. We’ll go over strategies for others later. But for now, just suck it up and drill yourself until you start to feel the connection. Once you feel the connection, you’ll be naturally more motivated to keep practicing. Make no mistake, learning these linguistic presuppositions as fluently as you can is one thing that will make a huge impact on how well you communicate. Every single thing you want from other people (which is pretty much everything unless you’re going to be a monk and go live in a cave) will be much easier once you are conversationally fluent in linguistic presuppositions. This will take time. In fact, consider these to be as important to your life as daily exercise, but they will have an enormous impact on your social and financial life. Drill daily!

Universal Desires with Presuppositions

Recall the universal desires of sex, money, validation and increased social status. These the things that you will be presupposing. You will be connecting these outcomes in a cause effect, with the cause being something that person is doing. Now, without any cold reading technology, you could make people feel pretty good. For example, let’s say you’ve just met somebody and they’ve mentioned they are thinking about finishing their degree, but they seem a little unsure. The very basic cause-effect statement to imply would be:

If you finish your degree (cause) then you will get more sex money and social status (effect).

Generally speaking, this is why we all get jobs anyhow. We all are programmed to seek more money, more sex, and more social status. Built into our brains, our DNA and our society, is the idea that we get more education, so we can get a better job, so we can get more money, which implies we’ll get more social status and sex. However, at the same time, one thing that will kill our social status if we are blatant about our desire for more social status, or our desire for more money, or more sex. This is a strange quirk of us humans. We actually believe that more money, more sex, and more social status is not what want. But every single thing that seems to lead there is something we are very interested in. It’s just that our weird conscious brains seem to need to convince us it’s for reasons other than social status, sex, or money. Put it another way, most people claim that money is not that important, but if their boss said they were cutting their salary by 20%, most normal people would scream bloody murder. The first task as a world class cold reader is to fully accept that sex, money, and social status is the true prime directive. The second task is to figure out how to imply this to others. To say in a way where it’s available, but not as the main reason. We are much more open to ideas of getting honest validation and appreciation for our efforts. Always remember the ancient caveman. He went out and tried to kill the biggest animal (money) so he could get massive social rewards and rock star treatment (social status and sex) when he brought it back to camp. We want increased social status, sex and money as a result of our genuine and openly recognized accomplishments. So long as you are clear about the accomplishments, the sex, money and social status will be implied. So, the above statement (about going to college to get money and sex as a result) can be rewritten as:

If you finish your degree (cause) you’ll really be able to make a contribution. I can tell when you do that, you’re going to really do something fantastic.

For most people, that is plenty. Saying, make a contribution combined with the very vague, do something fantastic is enough. It sounds very much like our ancient ancestors, killing something huge and dragging it back to camp. When you combine the idea of making a contribution with something fantastic they will fill in the blanks with their imagination and their DNA that is programmed to subconsciously crave social recognition, sex, and money as a reward for making a contribution. But if you just tell them that, they might not believe you. So, you’ll need to find a deeper cause for the first cause (of going to college). A cause that is based on their idea of uniqueness. All you need to do is talk to them and find anything about their past that can be leveraged. For example, you can find out what classes they’ve already taken, (they want to finish their degree). They’ll mention a few. Then ask which one was the hardest. They’ll name one. Everybody who has ever taken more than one class has one that is the hardest. And all of us, whenever we’ve done something difficult, have had the thought of quitting. This is human nature. This is something you can cold read, link to their ability to get through tough times and then link this to getting through college, and then link to their future of making a contribution and doing something fantastic. It might sound something like this:

What classes have you taken before?

Anatomy 101, Anatomy 250, and Chemistry.

Wow. Which was the hardest?

Chemistry!

I’ll bet! You probably got frustrated, right? Felt like quitting?

Yeah, a bunch of times!

But you didn’t know. For some reason, I can tell that about you. I’m not sure why, but you don’t seem like somebody that gives up easily. (human universal: nobody thinks they give up easily) In fact, when you finished, you probably felt pretty good about yourself. It’s people like that who keep going forward no matter what happens. One of the reasons (presupposition) is that you just don’t like the idea of yourself as a quitter (human universal). And once (presupposition) you truly realize (presupposition) that, you’ll make the decision that finishing college is something that you just have to do. I mean it’s what people like you do, you can’t quit, even if you tried. It’s people like you that go on to discover things and make contributions to society that others simply can’t (Barnum statement: Everybody’s contribution is slightly unique in some way). Because of this (vague cause - effect statement) I think you are going to do something fantastic someday. I don’t know how I can tell this, and it doesn’t really make any sense, but you have something incredible in your future.

Now, this is a rather long example. But it’s something that could be said after a very short conversation. It could be said to anybody who has started but didn’t finish college, or any other training program. Few humans believe they are quitters. Every human has experiences of wanting to quit and not quitting. All humans will respond very strongly to the idea of a positive future where we make a strong contribution and doing something fantastic. Of course, if you followed that above statement by suggestion you go to the nearest hotel to get down and dirty, they’d see it as an attempt at seduction. But if you delivered this a simple hit and run (where they could reasonably track you down if they wanted to) this would be much, much more profound. Delivered just like it is, without any ulterior motive would significantly increase their ability to make a decision to finish college (or to continue doing what they are unsure of doing). This sentiment is the exact same sentiment that most of us TRY to deliver but fail miserably. Most of us say things like:

You should really go back to college! Hard to get a job these days without a college degree!

But while the sentiment is there, the energy is not. Because that short statement is delivered with very little thought energy and enthusiasm, it will sound ordinary and be quickly forgotten, as will the person who said it. But just with a bit more thought energy, some practice, and a careful and honest delivery, the same sentiment will have a much more profound impact, and the deliverer (you) will never be forgotten.

Post-Game Journaling

Getting to the level of spitting out that above paragraph will take practice. You can get started today and start to recall all the interesting people you speak to that you’d like to use cold reading on. Write down the things they’ve said, write down some things they want, and then run them through your list of presuppositions and add in as many cause effect statements as you can.

Cold Reading Trifecta

We’ll review the three main ingredients to delivering a powerful cold reading statement or extended conversation. Think in terms of these three things when having a conversation with anybody, or more importantly, doing post game journaling.

Universal Desires and Experiences

Always try to see people through the filter of universal desires and experiences. Every time you meet somebody and find out anything about them, this can be used to add to your list. Any individual desires can be translated into universal desires. Somebody that has a job as a hair stylist but would really like to be a veterinarian may sound like a very specific desire. At the same time, wanting a job that pays more, that gets more validation and respect, and is more enjoyable is very much a common human desire. Any time you have a conversation with somebody and they express a unique sounding fear or anxiety, this can be translated into universal experience. Somebody who hasn’t been home in years, because they have unresolved issues with their alcoholic uncle who has lost his job and is now living with their parents may sound very unique. But all humans have issues with their birth family. Whenever you find yourself thinking about your own unique experiences, desires and anxieties, always translate those into universal human experiences. Most importantly always keep close in mind the universal future desires of all humans. More money. Closer relationships. More respect, validation and appreciation. Higher social status as a result of our unique accomplishments that only we can make.

Cause Effect

Built into the idea of cause-effect is the flow of time. Time moves from the past into the future. Things that we have will turn into things we will have. The way we are will turn into what we will become. You have an idea of their present situation. Their expressed or unexpressed universal wants and desires. Their expressed or unexpressed fears and anxieties and uncertainties. Always think of the flow of time whenever talking to others. You have a good idea of where they are, even if you’ve just met. They have a certain way of getting their needs met, but they want a better one. They have certain relationships, but they would like to improve them. They have questions about their reasons for being here, for their purpose in life. You know what they want, on a deep level. You know they crave a future with more love, more money, more sex, better health, more validation and more social status. You know where they are, and you know where they want to go. You can also use cause and effect to connect what you know about them, to what you don’t yet know, and can cold read. This doesn’t need to make logical sense, but it will seem natural when they hear it:

I don’t know how I know this, but because you are not happy in your life, there is something you’ve always wanted to do, and you might think it’s too late to do that. But because I sense something special about you, I really believe that you are just about to discover something about your skills. Something you may not have realized yet. And the more you think about this, the more you might realize that your future is much brighter than you may think.

Presuppositions

Linguistic presuppositions are the language patterns to carefully wrap around these ideas. Because you are the way you are, you will be the way you want to become. Because you have a desire for X, you will achieve Y. The more presuppositions you use, the easier it will be for them to simply listen to you speak and allow themselves to be uplifted. Whenever you talk to somebody, anybody, this is a great opportunity to practice cold reading. Find out anything about their current lives. Find out what they like about it, and what they don’t like about it. This is plenty to get started.

Always Journal

Once you have some information about them, you are ready to go. Write down a composite of their current life. The first few times you write this out, you’ll be writing the same things. The same basic things we all want. More money, better relationships, more validation, more respect, more contributions, and more social status. Then write down the same things we all fear. Rejection, exclusion, getting left behind or left out. Not being smart enough. Not being attractive enough. Not being young enough or old enough. Write these out every time as well. It will train your mind to start sorting for these things automatically. Pretty soon you’ll have each person’s unique details in your mind while you are speaking to them. Once you’ve got their current wants and fears, try to create a cold reading statement about their future. Use as much cause-effect language and linguistic presuppositions as you can. The basic form is like this:

While you may be afraid of X when you think about wanting Y, your future will be like Z.

X is common fears

Y is common desires

Z is a description of their future with more income, more social status and more recognition for their contributions

At first, it might seem clumsy and difficult to write this out. Don’t worry about writing out the same things over and over again. Every time you take the time to write this out, you’ll build more of these cold reading circuits in your brain. Before you develop the skill to speak conversationally in cold reading language, you’ll need to build the neural infrastructure. This is easiest and safest by writing.

Keep A Swipe File of Unique Statements

A swipe file is something copywriters keep. Any time they hear a unique phrase, anecdote, or metaphor, they swipe it for later use. Consider keeping a swipe file of similar phrases that are used to indicate uniqueness. A unique statement is a carefully worded Barnum statement, which is essentially true for everybody, but it is phrased so it sounds like you are discovering something unique about them, and them only. These are the small phrasal elements that will make the above structure (universal fears and desires, universal ideal future and a cause-effect statement joining them) sound much more personal, relatable and memorable. Here are some examples.

Everybody sees things their own way.

You have a unique perspective. It’s like you have your own way of seeing the world, and at the same time, you know it’s important, but you can’t quite share it with others in a way that makes sense.

Everybody has overcome obstacles.

I can tell you’ve had some difficult experiences in the past. When you knew you might fail, and you knew you couldn’t really turn to anybody for help. And you could either quit, where you wouldn’t be blamed, but you decided not to. Something inside you made you just charge ahead and get it done. That is a very special trait, one that few people seem to have.

Everybody has a secret crush

I don’t know whether you are in a totally happy relationship or not, but I get the feeling somehow that there is somebody in your life. Somebody whom if they professed their love for you, in just the right way, it would be a dream come true. But at the same time, you wouldn’t dare say anything to them like that.

Everybody is worried about how they look

Can I tell you something? I mean something I sense about you that might make you feel a little uncomfortable? You get a lot of attention from a lot of people. But sometimes, the way they speak about you is the absolute opposite of how you feel about yourself. And sometimes the difference is so much, the way you feel about yourself, and the way they talk about you, it makes you feel so lonely. As if nobody really sees you.

Cold Reading Compliments

One way to ease into this type of communication is to drop a few compliments wrapped up in linguistic presuppositions. These have same intention and sentiment as blatant compliments (e.g. to make the receiver feel better) but because they take a bit more brainpower, they’ll be more complex and have more of an impact. For example, think of somebody who is talking about a potential future, but with some concerns. We’ll return to our imaginary conversation with somebody who would like to go back and finish their degree but have plenty of reservations. A typical, minimum-thought-out compliment would be:

Oh, you should totally do that!

Clearly, this is pretty weak. Think of giving compliments like you would help somebody out physically. If somebody was unloading a truck and you got the lightest thing and carried it with only one hand, they wouldn’t appreciate it very much. On the other hand, if you grabbed several armloads of stuff, it would help them significantly. When we help others, and others help us, by clearly putting in a lot of effort, we appreciate not only the reduction in our own physical labor, but the specific effort made by another human to share our burden. Imagine how good it feels when a stranger goes out of their way to stand and hold the door when they see you approaching with an armful of things (or kids). When we give compliments advice, it works the same way. If we put only a minimum amount of brainpower into the compliment or the advice, it will be received like we helped with a very small amount of physical labor. On the other hand, if we put in a lot of brainpower, it will be received as if we spent a lot of physical effort helping them do an exhaustive task. The way to do this mentally and verbally is with linguistic presuppositions. The idea is simple. Whatever they are worried about, presuppose they’ll be able to handle it, and if possible, presuppose they’ll be able to handle it because they’ve handled similar things in the past. This is possible without any cold reading technology.

So, do you like your job?

Yeah, it’s ok.

But?

Well, I wish I was doing X instead.

X, do you need a degree for that?

Yeah, but.

You don’t have one.

Right.

Do you have part of one?

Yeah, but...

Since (presupposition) you’ve already started it’s just a matter of finishing. Most people never start, but because (cause - effect) you’ve already started, you already (presupposition) have a head start. It might not be easy, but you already (presupposition) know that nothing that is worth something is easy. Surely, you’ve done some difficult things in your past, right?

Right.

OK, so it’s just doing more of what you’ve already done. And the more you think of it that way (the more... the more...) the easier it will see getting your degree as just a continuation of what you’re doing now.

This has the exact same intention. To give them motivation to do what they said they wanted to do. And just like heaving lifting helps people complete exhaustive tasks, heavy thinking helps people think about exhaustive things. This may seem a strange way to think about it. By putting in more than a couple calories worth of thought behind the same intended advice will help them much more. The goal is not to become their life coach or even change their behavior. The goal is to simply make them feel better because they were lucky enough to have a conversation with you.

Presupposed Compliments

You can do this with compliments well. The above conversation would take a little bit of rapport, not a lot of people would share their anxiety over their future with a stranger. But you can give some pretty powerful hit and run compliments and make them much more memorable by wrapping them in linguistic presuppositions. We’ll take a simple compliment based on how they look, based on how they are dressed, not their looks. A simple, brainless compliment would be:

Wow, nice shoes!

But to make it into a compliment we can wrap a linguistic presupposition around, we’ll need to presuppose something other than how nice their shoes look. Since people generally dress nice so they get positive attention from others, we’ll make the presupposition that everybody else thinks they look nice, not just us. We’ll look at some of our presuppositions from the previous chapter. Now, some of these may sound a little goofy. But they are also something that will take a bit of thought. And if you give them as hit and run compliments you can think of them as compliment time bombs that resonate in their brains, leaving them with good feelings long after you’ve left.

Commentary Adjectives and Adverbs

luckily, fortunately, happily, remarkably

Luckily, my girlfriend is not with me, because she’d see those shoes and get really jealous, and then really angry at me for noticing them!

Comparative As

as....as...

A feel sorry for your competition because few things are as attractive as those shoes!

Factive Verbs and Adjectives

realize, aware, know, regret, believe

Once your competition realizes how good you look in those shoes, they’ll just give up and go home!

Relative Clauses

noun + who, which, that

People that wear shoes that look that good make it much harder on the rest of us normal humans.

Change of Time Verbs

begin, start, stop, etc.

Anybody who is competing against you in the looks department will have to stop and take a look at themselves once they notice how good those shoes look on you.

Pseudo Cleft Sentence

what is X about Y is...

What is probably the best thing about how good those shoes look on you is that my girlfriend isn’t here to see me gawking at them.

Subordinate Clause of Time

After, before, since, while

After anybody with half a brain sees how good those shoes look they’ll have to go home and reexamine their wardrobe.

Cleft Sentences

it is... it was....

I don’t know if it is the color or the shape of those shoes that make them so attractive on you.

Quantifiers

only, even, just, except

It’s not just those shoes that make you look gorgeous, it’s that entire outfit!

Ordinal Number

first, second, third, etc.

Those shoes are gorgeous, and that’s just the second thing I noticed about you!

Complex Adjectives

new, old, previous, present

Every new girl I see that is wearing an attractive pair of shoes is going to be compared to those and be found lacking.

Some Quantifiers

all, each, every, some, few, many,

Everybody who sees you wearing those shoes today is going to fall in love with you.

Change of Place Verbs

come, go, enter, depart, leave

Wearing shoes that good will leave all your competitors struggling to catch up!

Homework

Whenever you see somebody you’d like to compliment, remember that incident, and then write out that compliment wrapped in as many goofy presuppositional statements as you can. Always remember the goal. To make others feel good because of you.

Third Person Magic

One very powerful technique that works when doing blatant cold reading is speaking about the person in front of you in the third person. Saying this person instead of you. When people say things to us directly, we tend to have a huge amount of resistance. By taking the person and putting them into the third person, it allows for a much more objective view by both the deliverer and receiver of the cold reading statements. This is based on the idea that cold reading is best by noticing positive things about them said in a unique way, and by implying that they will have a positive future filled with more love, sex, romance, money and social status. Let’s do a mental experiment to see the difference. Suppose you went to see a professional physic. Let’s say as soon as you sat down, they immediately looked directly at you, making strong eye contact, and said:

You are going to be a rock star in the future and have lots of sex and make lots of money!

Now, all of us would love to be rock stars (or famous singers, actors, etc.) and have lots of sex and make lots of money. But most of us wouldn’t believe the psychic for a second if they said this as soon as we walked in. Now let’s imagine the psychic does a bit of background checking and finds out that when we were in third grade, we loved to draw.

Because you used to draw, you have the mind of an artist! That means you are going to be a rock star, have lots of sex and make lots of money!

It sounds a little better, since it has a cause-effect put in. But it still might be unbelievable if we don’t have any musical instruments at home, and whenever we sing in the car our friends scream at us. Suppose the psychic did more digging and found many more causal reasons to the effect of being a rock star. Suppose she talked to us for twenty minutes and got a lot of background and put together ten or twenty elements of our history as the cause, to lead to the effect of being a rock star. It might work, but if she delivered the message while looking directly at us, we would still feel a little bit of resistance. For some reason, we humans don’t like strangers looking us in the eye while telling us things about ourselves. Chances are when you were a kid, adults (parents and teachers) said things about you, sometimes looking at you, sometimes not. This isn’t something that we feel wholly comfortable with. We very much like receiving praise, but this is from these we’ve done. A very common, and very effective way to talk about the future in a way that is the most readily accepted is to speak in the third person, and not make any eye contact. For some reason, when we hear about ourselves spoken about in the third person, it seems more like a potential future, than our set-in-stone destiny.

Common Set Ups

You’ll need a plausible reason to look off to the side, and to speak in the third person. If you just started doing that from scratch, they might think you’re a little off. But if we use our old friend cause-effect, they will believe it. A good cause to the effect of looking off to the side is that they have strong energy. Here we can use another common human experience.

We all have experiences where people are afraid to talk to us.

This happens more to women than men. But if you look into your past, you can find plenty of experiences of people wanting to talk to you and being nervous. So, you can start off like this:

You have a very strong personality. I’m sensing times in your past when your personality maybe made it difficult to speak directly to you? (Wait for them to nod) Yeah, I’m totally getting that. I’ll need to read your energy kind of obliquely. Wow, your energy is very strong. Let me close my eyes and get an objective view of your energy as I can.  (wait a few breaths). Ok, this person has....

Jewelry

You can use pieces of jewelry, or watches, or anything else. Tell them the same setup, that they have strong energy, and that you only need a piece of jewelry. Or you can simply start by asking for a piece of jewelry. Once you have it in your hands, close your eyes, take a few breaths and start the reading.

Ok, this person....

Use Liberal Facial Expressions

Another reason to look off to the side, and close your eyes, if at all possible, is you can be much more expressive with your facial expressions. Actually make a picture in your mind of a horrible child being punished when speaking about any past failures. When describing their ideal future, imagine the climax of your favorite superhero movie. This is a very good way to visualize their prime directive (more sex, more money, more social status, etc.) and it will be very congruent, since you actually are visualizing your favorite movie.

Movie Method

When describing their ideal future, describe the final triumphant scene in your favorite movie. Don’t be too literal. Don’t say this:

I see a time in the future when you are flying an X-wing fighter towards, what a moon? No, not a moon. A space station! I see that you decide to switch off your targeting computer, and yes! You blow up the death star!

That would be just silly! But you can take that same scene, put it in very vague language, but still see it in your mind so you can get the full emotions and facial expressions.

I see a time in this person’s future. I can’t see it clearly, but this person is doing something very important. A lot of people depend on this, and this person is the only person who can do it. I see success, and I see that this achievement helps a lot of people. Going into this situation, this person is nervous, scared, doesn’t know if they can do it. But I think if this person remembers that everybody is really hoping they’ll be successful. Yes, that’s it. That’s what I’m getting. It’s important for this person, the most important thing for this person, is to remember that people want you to succeed. When this person thinks of that, that is what will give them the courage to go forward.

Other Sensory Information Available

If you are looking off to the side with your eyes closed, you’ll be much more open to their breathing rate, and how deeply they are breathing. This will only take a bit of practice, but simply by listening to how much somebody is breathing can give you a lot of information. If you can hear somebody take in a deep breath, hold it, and then let out a bit exhale, this is an indication of releasing an emotional block. You can simply pace how you feel while you let yourself be guided by their breathing.

Deep Exhale

Wow, I just felt a sudden release of information. Like a huge weight has been lifted.

Slow Shallow Breathing

There is something you are keeping close. Something you are worried about. Something you are uncertain about.

Shifting in Their Seat - Nervousness

Ok, relax, try to focus, breathe deeply, keep your feet on the floor.

Sounds of Crossing Arms and Legs

Something is blocking me. Try and open up.

Background Checking

One benefit of using the third-person or eyes closed method is it will help you dig for more information. Then once you find out a little bit more, you can deliver a much more powerful cold reading. This will come across as deeply insightful. This will work as follows. You will be blatantly doing a cold reading, meaning they know you are going to be telling them things about themselves, their desires, etc. So, you can ask about things that they want, things they are worried about, etc. But as you are asking, you can ask vaguely. And as you listen to their answers, you can find situations from your own life where you match closely with what they are describing. Then you can describe your own situation using vague or third person language, even going so far as describing what happened to you but describing it to them as if it is a prediction on what will likely happen to them in the future. Let’s look at a simple example. Let’s say they’ve come to you with help in making a decision. From the get-go, it’s always good to keep their requests as vague as possible, and in structure language as much as possible. All you really need to do is get the theme of what they want. For example, let’s say all you have about them is they have trouble making a decision. So, you close your eyes, (after explaining they have very strong energy and you have trouble looking at them directly) and face off to the side. Then you can start asking some either-or questions.

This decision, does it involve more of a personal choice or a professional choice?

Personal choice.

(Thinking and nodding).

Ok, I see, I see. Relationship, finance, health, etc.

Now, how you give them the choices is up to you, and your experience. If you are just beginning, you can keep giving them binary choices until you narrow it down. A common way professional psychics work is they offer a couple of choices, and then based on the non-verbal response, they know which choice it is. Then they act like they knew that was the choice all along. Then later, the customer, through hindsight bias, will remember it being more of the psychic knowing the choice beforehand. This really isn’t necessary, especially if you aren’t charging money. But all you really need to do is find out the area their choice is on. Relationship, finance, health, etc. While you are listening to their answers, you find a choice in your own history that matches the following criteria:

It was a big choice at the time, one that took a lot of thought, and one that ended up for the better.

Let’s say that they landed on a financial choice. And you quickly scan your memory, and found the most recent financial decision you made, one which caused a lot of anxiety yet ended up OK. For our example, we’ll assume this was the purchase of a house. Then you simply describe your experience, that you had in the past, but as if you are looking into their future. So long as you use structure language and are vague, their hindsight bias will do the rest. Let’s say for you, the real situation was like this:

Your spouse wanted to buy a house much more than you. You were worried about the economy, the real estate market and your job. You were worried about hidden costs. You were also worried that if you argued in favor of not buying the house, it would harm your relationship. So, you were feeling pressure to make a financial decision that you weren’t totally comfortable with. Finally, you expressed this to your spouse, you had a long talk about your relationship, your future, and in the end you both decided to buy a house. That was several years ago and while it was rough for the first couple years, both of you are making more money now, and the value of the house has gone up considerably.

To describe this, simply act as if you are looking into their future and describe this in vague structure language.

OK, I see it now. There is a very difficult financial decision in your future, and I see you are not totally alone in this. I sense this other person, this relationship with them is also playing a part in this decision, perhaps more so than you want to admit. I see that part of you realizes this, but it’s not something you feel comfortable addressing directly, because part of you is afraid that doing so will cause the problem to get worse instead of better. (Wait for them to agree). But I can see further, beyond this decision, and I do see that you will make the right decision, but only after you discuss this decision completely with this other person. Once you do that, it will be the right decision. The further I look beyond this, the more I see how much you realize you’d made the right decision.

Leverage Any Confirmation Bias

If you are doing this with somebody that didn’t know you could do cold readings (somebody you meet at a party, for example) you’ll have to stick with the vague, either or questions to set things up. But the more you come pre-branded as a cold reader (up to you if you want to present yourself as an actual psychic or merely an intuitive or an empath) the more you can leverage confirmation bias. Consider the following exchange.

Let me see, you are here with a relationship issue...

(no response)

A financial issue...

(no response)

A career issue…

Yes!

To a skeptic, they’ll see right through it. They’ll realize you are guessing and it’s just a trick. This is their confirmation bias working perfectly. They believed you were trying to convince them of your psychic skills through trickery, and nothing you do will prove them otherwise. On the other hand, somebody who comes fully believing in telepathy and paranormal behavior will have the opposite response. Their confirmation bias will see the above as proof of your skills. They will later remember the exchange as you actually reaching into their mind and finding out exactly what their problem was. Even more so if your eyes are closed, and all you noticed was a sudden change of breathing instead of the “Yes!” response. Consider that part of your skills as a cold reader is accurately measuring what their confirmation is and how to best leverage it.

Closed Eyes Setup Review

Step One

Start off with your eyes closed, and ask a few very vague, either or questions. (health or finance, etc.). While you are doing so, look into your own past.

Step Two

Identify a situation from your past that is structurally similar to theirs that has two important criteria. One is that it was a tough decision that was hard to make and had a lot of variables (people, reasons for going either way, etc.). Two is it must be one that eventually ended with a happy ending.

Step Three

Describe your own situation to them, using vague language and as if it hasn’t happened yet. Go slowly, and listen carefully for them to add any information, which they likely will. Whenever they add more information agree with them as if anything they tell you is helping you to clarify your vision.

Post Hypnotic Suggestions

A powerful way to enhance the lingering effect of any cold reading is by delivering post hypnotic suggestions. As these are normally demonstrated on TV or in the movies, they are almost always used as a comic device. Every time you hear your name, you’ll hop on your left foot and talk like a penguin. And the way they are delivered are equally comic:

From now on, every time somebody says you’re name, you’ll immediately spin around three times counter clockwise and cluck like a chicken.

Of course, since they are being delivered in fictional situations, the actual process is not important. The audience sees them set up, and then the funny part is when they are triggered. But in real life, they need to be delivered a little bit more carefully. One of the misunderstandings that comes from TV or movie hypnosis is that is delivered by a simple command. “When I say this, you’ll do that.” It takes a lot longer to deliver post hypnotic suggestions. They are set up much like Pavlov’s dogs. As the story goes, Pavlov brought his dogs food and they salivated. Then he brought them food and rang a bell, and they salivated. Then he rang the bell only, and they salivated. He took one natural response and copied from the external stimulus that naturally causes it and pasted it onto another neutral stimulus. Post hypnotic suggestions work similarly. You take something that happens naturally, and then attach it to something that it normally wouldn’t be attached to.

The Story Instinct

Consider the idea that one of the reasons we humans like stories so much is they allow for the creation of post hypnotic suggestions. Young men and women hear stories about hero’s fighting against terrifying monsters. The hero always wins, regardless of how terrified he or she is. Then when it’s time for the kids to grow up and go hunting themselves, they’ll remember the stories, and remember the feelings of courage the stories evoked. In movie hypnosis, this would be like giving them the post hypnotic suggestion of, whenever you see a mastodon, you’ll feel massive courage. The same idea, but the delivery takes a bit longer.

Cold Reading Post Hypnotic Suggestions

The ideal post hypnotic suggestion is that every time your target moves into the future and encounters any kind of doubt or uncertainty, they’ll remember your prediction that they will someday do something magnificent that will get them plenty of money, sex and social status. This will give them the motivation to succeed. This will also get them to remember you. Translated into movie hypnosis, this post hypnotic suggestion would be:

Every time you feel unsure or uncertain about your future, you’ll remember this message and how I told you about your great and powerful future.

Luckily, this kind of thing will tend to work fairly well on its own. The longer the cold reading you give them, the more you build up their future, the more they’ll remember you. The only thing you’ll need to remember is the idea of overcoming obstacles. This is a common universal trait. We all have overcome tons of obstacles in our past. We all have overcome obstacles when there was nobody there but us. The common human experience is this:

There is an obstacle. You don’t know if you can overcome it. If you give up, nobody will blame you. On the other hand, if you overcome that obstacle and keep moving forward, nobody will know either. They will just assume you got it done without any issue.

This can be anything from getting lost, stopping and asking for directions and still making it to a meeting on time. Or finding something that was broken, fixing it yourself and then forgetting about it. We all do this several times a week. Some of them are big incidents, and we truly feel proud of ourselves. Others are no big deal, and we don’t give it a second thought. But it is a common experience. The problem comes when we come up to an obstacle and we really do feel like it’s beyond our capabilities, and if we actually are thinking of getting help, or thinking of an excuse. This is another universal human experience: Of giving up and making an excuse that puts the blame away from us. But when you specifically use the long collection of overcome obstacles as the one of the primary causes of your target’s future social status (due to contributions and great things) they will be much more likely to remember that whenever they come up to an obstacle. This requires three elements be built into the cold reading.

They Have A History of Overcoming Obstacles

Elicit any feeling of overcoming obstacles. Deliver this as an intuition, that you see they are the kind of person who doesn’t give up, even when giving up is acceptable, or the only person who knows they have given up is them.

This Trait Is Unique to Them

When you notice this trait about them, make sure they know it’s not a common trait. Since we all both overcome obstacles and give up (and blame others) in equal measure, this will be easy. Essentially, you’ll be pointing out the obstacles being overcome by them and pointing out the giving up and making excuses by others. This will covertly leverage their current social status (they are superior because they don’t give up like everybody else).

This Trait Will Cause Their Future Success

Make sure to paint a clear causative path into their glorious future. That trait of not giving up, even when nobody is watching is going to be the one thing that propels them to their eventual future. You don’t know what that is, but you sense that this one powerful and unique trait that you sense in them (that few others have) is going to be their main driver of success.

Example Statement

I can sense something very unique in you. Something very strong. A deep sense of resilience. I can tell you are somebody that doesn’t give up easily. Even when nobody is going to know but you, you keep pushing through, because you can’t stand to give in to your circumstances. That is very rare. Most people don’t have that quality. That’s the quality that’s going to propel you into the future. That resilience is going to help you to achieve that thing, that idea. I’m not sure what that is, and you won’t really understand this until it’s complete, but it will be something of a great accomplishment. Something that helps a great many people. A great many people who will recognize and admire you for that great accomplishment. And the main driving force to get you there will be that deep, strong sense of resilience that I can sense in you. You know this about yourself. You remember this about yourself. You remember this every time you come up to another obstacle, bigger than the last. It’s almost like you enjoy them, because you know you can take care of whatever life throws at you. I admire that very much about you.

More Common Experiences

In this chapter we’ll go over some common human experiences and how to cold read them. If they are negative, we’ll add some statements to make the target feel better. If they are positive, we’ll add some unique statements that will make the target feel good about their current and future social status.

We All Had an Unrequited Crush

There’s something about your past that I sense. There was somebody that you really liked, but for some reason, they never knew. Perhaps you didn’t tell them, or you tried but they didn’t understand. Recently something has happened that has reminded you of that feeling. The anxiety of a feeling of attraction or affection that isn’t reciprocated. But I can tell that you have a great amount of love to offer, and part of you knows to keep that to yourself until you meet the right person. It’s like the conscious part of you wanted to express that affection, but a much deeper, much more powerful and sentient part of you knew it would be better to save your deep powers of affection for the one that would make everything click together.

How to Use

Whenever you see somebody glancing around a crowd and exhibiting any kind of loneliness body language.

We Are All Worried About Getting Left Behind

There’s something I sense about you, how you look out at all these people. Part of you is happy and excited and knows that you are a great friend. But a deeper part of you is worried. Something happened to you in your past, something terrifying. I sense a strong feeling of loneliness, abandonment. I think there’s still part of you that fears that is possible. But at the same time, there is a much deeper part of you, a much more ancient part, that knows everybody is connected on some level. It’s that part of you that knows you can never truly be alone. It’s that part, that when you embrace it, it will allow you shine your light in a way that can never be abandoned.

How to Use

Whenever you see somebody that is alone in a social crowd and doesn’t seem comfortable being alone. E.g. they seem to be glancing around, as if they want to be part of a group rather than on their own.

We Are All Unsure of What We Are Doing Exactly

I can sense part of you that is a powerful explorer. A part that wants to continue to learn new things and meet new people. But there is also a part that is worried about getting in over your head. Even worse, that part of you is worried about what might happen if you get in over your head when others are depending on you. I sense that part of you sometimes keeps you from going forward as much as you can. But I think that sometimes you forget that the people that depend on you, can also be depended upon by you. That if you ever think you are in over your head, people will be more than willing to help you figure things out. That is very unique quality, to allow you to so easily shift from leader to seeker of advice, that is the true center of a very strong and natural leader.

How to Use

Whenever somebody seems frustrated and could use some cheering up. Whenever somebody looks ready to throw in the towel.

We All Have Accomplishments We Are Proud Of

Wow, you have done a lot of things, I can just tell. You have this very quiet, but very powerful and very healthy sense of appreciation of yourself, your accomplishments. It’s like you look inside, look back into your past, and see what you’ve done and then extrapolate that into the future and feel good about some of the things you know you are going to accomplish. But at the same time, it’s almost subconscious, like you are so confident in your abilities, you can just let that kind of thing run on autopilot, and only check on it when you need to. That is a kind of deep confidence that is very rare.

How to Use

Whenever you see somebody that is in a good mood.

We All Question Our Closest Relationships

I sense that you have a certain amount of inner turmoil. But it’s unique in that it’s not suppressed like in most. Most people don’t even acknowledge it, but I can tell you are brave enough to look at it directly. Like you are confident enough to think about the most important things in your life, but through a very critical eye. To make sure they are as healthy as they could be. To make sure they are as strong as they could be. Paradoxically, it is this trait that makes them the strongest. This is what most people miss, most people that are terrified to even acknowledge that this deep conflict exists. But once you look this deep conflict in the eye, you are confident enough you can deal with it, otherwise you would keep it suppressed like everybody else.

How to Use

Best used when you know that somebody might be having relationship problems. A friend or colleague who shares a very brief description of such problems.

We All Worry About the Future

There is something about you, something that seems like worry, but it’s something else. It’s more like a quiet sense of anticipation. Like you know something is coming, but since you don’t know what it is, you are getting ready for anything. Most people would interpret this as fear, or anxiety, but that would be a mistake. Since you recognize this as a useful and healthy way to anticipate the unknown, this will give you the most amount of emotional flexibility to handle anything that comes up. If you were to brush it off as anxiety or worry, like most do, this would shut off a certain amount of emotional and intellectual creativity and would actually create that which is feared the most.

How to Use

As this fear is ever present, this is a good one to use whenever you see somebody that is anxious or worried for any reason.

We All Want Validation for Our Efforts

There is something in you that some would interpret as sadness, but I think you know that’s not what it is. Some make the mistake of feeling left out, or taken for granted, and think they need constant recognition and validation from others. But I think part of you realizes that only true validation comes from within, since you are the only one who truly knows the extent of your accomplishments. I also sense that something huge is coming. I don’t know when, or I don’t know how, but this inner resilience, that doesn’t need constant recognition and validation, will someday lead to something so magnificent that everybody will have to notice. I think part of you realizes this is coming, that’s why you’re OK going it alone in the short term.

How to Use

Whenever you want to cheer somebody up. This is an all-purpose pick me up as most of us, at any given time, have recently done things for which we haven’t received any positive validation from others.

Drive-By Intuition Readings

A good way to practice giving these is in any drive by situation. However, since this is also a common pickup technique, you’ll need to follow a few rules. So long as you adhere to the following rules, using these in any kind of hit and run technique will give you a lot of experience.

Rule One - Do Not Offer or Ask for Names

To make sure the target doesn’t think you are trying to pick them up, be sure not to try to exchange names. If they ask for your name, give it to them, and if they give you theirs, take it. Remember, the purpose of hit and run cold reading is to gain experience, not to meet people.

Rule Two - Don’t Wear Out Your Welcome

Once you give the reading, split. Don’t hang around wait for them to offer their number or tell you what a genius you are. Show up, give the reading, and bounce.

Rule Three - Always Ask Permission

Since this isn’t any pick up or friend meeting technique, you want to respect their privacy and their space. Use an ice breaker and ask them if you can tell them something you noticed about them.

Why the Rules?

If these work well, they will feel good. But if you break any of the rules, they’ll start to wonder if this is just some kind of pickup technique. This will make them question the validity of the reading, and your honesty. Once you start getting success with these, meaning you can walk up to pretty much anybody, any time and give them an accurate reading, you will get some very positive responses. Always leave when they are happy. The goal is to make them feel good and leave before they find out much about you. An interesting marketing study was done on crayons. One type of crayon was called “tangerine orange.” Another crayon was called “millennial orange.” The second crayon outsold the first by a lot. Uncertainty creates curiosity, and curiosity peaks interest. Curiosity has been shown time and time again as one of the main ingredients in increasing buying temperature. If you give a positive reading that creates good feelings and then split, this will create a very mysterious, who was that guy, feeling. This will enhance the power of your cold reading skills. The more mystery you surround your cold reading skills, the more powerful they will become. On the other hand, if you always hang around waiting for a reward, you’ll be known as the guy or gal who uses cold reading but with some kind of angle. On a much deeper level, if you hit and run, this will leave you with plenty of memories of people looking at you with positive feelings while looking at you with powerful, “who is that person?” curiosity. This will significantly enhance your confidence, which will significantly enhance your cold reading skills.

Drive-By Structure

Whenever you are somewhere social, where it’s appropriate to walk up and start a conversation with somebody, look around for an appropriate target. Read their body language and their situation, think of what they are feeling based on both. Take a few minutes to think of a few sentences. Always remember to follow the basic pattern.

I notice something about you.

This thing I notice about you is different from everybody.

This makes you unique and special.

Because you are unique and special, I am impressed by you.

Notice this is more or less the same structure as a compliment. When you say somebody has pretty eyes, you are saying something that is unique and special about them, and that something impresses you. But that something is obvious for everybody to see. When you deliver drive-by cold readings, you are presupposing that you are special as well, because only you can see that deep characteristic of them. And this is absolutely true. Few people will take the time to think about people’s body language, how it relates to the situation, and human universals. Few people will also take the time to frame that thing in a way that implies increased social status (that thing is unique and makes them special). This will make them feel a billion times better than saying they have pretty eyes. And they will be a billion times more impressed with you, since any goof who can see can notice they have pretty eyes.

Beginning Skill Level

When you first start, it might take all your confidence to get it out of your head and into words. That’s fine. Take your time. Spend some time sitting and writing things that you could say, and then imagine saying them while you are sitting there. Once you cross the verbal threshold, just worry about saying it, making sure they understand it, and then split.

Intermediate Skill Level

Once you have a little bit of confidence, you speak a little slower, and put in some pauses and play around with your own tonality, facial expressions and gestures. Experiment with your own unique cold reading delivery method.

Upper Intermediate Skill Level

This is when you can deliver it like a skilled performer, as well as pay close attention to their body language. This is when you can start to pace their breathing, and notice how their skin tone changes, and their pupils, and how their body languages shifts.

Top Level Skill

This is when you can deliver it and alter your delivery (words and non-verbal communication) based on their non-verbal body language. This is when you get to the level of humans as emotional resonance chambers. When you really feel that you can walk up to anybody, and simply with your communication (verbal and non-verbal), literally feel as you are manipulating their emotions in real time. You’ll walk over, slowly deliver the reading, and leave when they are that wonderful peak of emotional satisfaction. This is when you can walk away, slowly and confidently, knowing they are staring at you while thinking, “Wow, who is that guy?”

How Long to Top Level Skill?

Make no mistake, getting there will take a long time. Upper beginner and medium levels are beyond what most people think is possible. Upper beginner will make you a star of any party or social event. Upper beginner will be enough to get you any job, especially when you take time to prepare and practice for the interview. Just thinking in terms of body language, universal human conditions and then framing those in a way that make people feel special and unique (implied social status) is way beyond how most people think and communicate. Think of top level skills as being a walking wizard. The holy grail of human communication, to literally walk the earth and alter the emotions of others in real time, just as you would play an instrument like a virtuoso.

Always Journal Post Game

Even if you just sit and watch people, at least write down the situation. Write down how you read their body language. Write down their demographic information (age, gender, etc.). Write down the situation. Then later, come up with an approximation of the kinds of things they are experiencing. Are they happy or worried? Are they content or do they long for something? Based on what they were doing, (reading, studying, mindlessly flipping through social media) what can you estimate about their current state? How can you frame that to make them feel positive and unique? How can you use any cause-effect language to make them feel better about their future?

The Great Paradox

Long ago, Mother Nature blessed humans with a set of powerful instincts. Auto pilot motivational systems that compel is to keep doing the things that keep us alive, and to compel us to not do the things that will kill us. The most important of these is also the hardest to identify. It has puzzled philosophers and religious thinkers for thousands of years. It can be exceedingly complex, and we can get complicatedly esoteric and metaphysical about this important instinct. Of course, we are referring to the ego. The part of us that makes us believe we are the most important person in any group of people. That part of us that compels us to do the best we can to thrive in any social situation. This is the part of us that craves recognition. This is the part of us that craves to rise the ranks of social status. This is the part of us that gets us dreaming of magnificent success that will get us massive validation and rock star status from our peers. To make sure we see this as a pure instinct, let’s compare two tribes of ancient people. One tribe was populated by people, each with a powerful ego instinct. The other tribe was not.

Non-Ego Tribe

The tribe without ego didn’t care about doing great things and getting rock star treatment as a result. the tribe without ego didn’t care about winning the productivity contest. Each member only cared about getting enough for himself, and his family. Nobody cared about what anybody else thought. The ladies in this tribe didn’t see social status as an attraction factor, because social status didn’t exist. All the men and women ended up with the easiest person they could. No men competed for women. No women competed for men. How long would this tribe last? With every member only hunting for itself, no big animals would be sought. Just by the law of averages, there would always be people going hungry. And whenever a predator came, they would all scatter in opposite directions. Clearly, a tribe without an ego instinct wouldn’t survive very long.

The Ego Tribe

This tribe was like us. Each of the hunters wanted to kill the biggest animal. This productivity contest happened every single day. In their endless search for glory, the tribe was always feasting on large animals. The ladies were always going after the high-status males, the most productive, the best hunters. So, the tribe was always being repopulated by the best hunters and leaders. Every day, each tribal member sought to raise their social status. Social status was everything. This required a daily inward look, a personal decision that said, “I need to demonstrate to everybody just how important I am!” The only way to do this was to be more productive. Kill bigger animals. Be more courageous in defending predators. This also came with a very subtle but also very important idea. Not only was each “I” inside craving to demonstrate their importance, but this required each “I” inside had a strong belief in his or her uniqueness. In a sense, the ego is driven to demonstrate how our uniqueness is better than every other uniqueness out there.

Common Uniqueness Thought

A very common thought is that as follows:

Look at all the mindless sheep out there. They are all just walking around, thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things. They don’t get it. I get it. I’m different than all these mindless sheep. If only I could convince them of that somehow. If only they would notice this somehow. Then they would understand me. Then they would see.

This is very hard to accept, that everybody has the same thought. The thought that says everybody has the same thought, except the thinker of the above thought. This is the great paradox. That to be a world class cold reader, you must absolutely embrace this. To embrace the idea that every unique experience you have had is really very similar to all the unique experiences that everybody else has also had, and also feels are extremely unique. The heart of the human ego is that I am unique. Perhaps this came with self-awareness, or conscious thinking. Who knows. It’s doubtful that penguins stare out at all the other penguins and lament the single mindedness of their peers.

Create Uniqueness Through Behavior

Perhaps because our modern world is so different than the ancient one in which we evolved. Ancient humans were driven by their desire to establish their uniqueness as being better than everybody else, as there was a direct reward. But in order to do so, they had to serve their fellow tribe members. It was impossible to be better without providing more value to their tribe. Today the idea of social status is completely disconnected from any idea of providing value to others. Paradoxically, the way you can provide real value to others is by understanding the massive amount of similarities. This means you must give up any idea that simply because you are that you are unique. Consider the art of cold reading as a way to demonstrate your uniqueness by effectively describing how unique we all desperately want to believe we are. But if you do so in a way that uplifts them, and makes you look like a superstar communicator, then everybody wins.

Embrace the Sameness

Joseph Campbell, after discovering that the structure of mythology, and the structure of the archetypical hero was virtually identical from culture to culture, even across thousands of years, figured there were only two ways to explain this. Either once upon a time, there was one source of this hero’s journey template (which he called the “monomyth”), or this same mythology arises time and time again because we humans are similarly structured. We have the same fears, the same anxieties, the same desires, the same hopes. Even Jung noticed this when he began looking into the dreams of all his patients. He found they all had the same archetypical elements, over and over again. We are all humans. We think the same, we feel the same, we respond the same to the same situations.

Dig Deep into Your Emotions

Most people will never look deeply into their emotions. So, when you do, and you describe your experiences but through vague structure language, this will resonate with them on a deep level. Everybody feels they are unique, that their feelings and complex emotions are unique. So, when you essentially pace their emotions on a level they’ve never considered, and resonate their truth, they will be astounded. They will truly believe you have a deep insight into their soul. They will truly believe that you know them better than they know themselves. This will give you an incredible amount of power. Power that can no doubt be abused. We’ll leave it to you to decide what is moral and ethical. But none of this will be possible unless you first openly and honestly explore your own emotions in as much complex detail as possible. This is the message over the Oracle at Delphi, the place where ancient Greeks went to discern their future. One we can see is extremely relevant for us:

Man, know thyself, and you are going to know the gods.

Know Thyself - Know Others

The more accurately and honestly you can dig through your own brain and your own feelings and emotions, the more accurately you can resonate with others. This will make you a very valuable and very unique person to many. One that will do great things, help many people, and be treated like a rock star!

Final Words

If this is your first time reading through this, then you are perhaps overwhelmed. The ideas may be inspiring but at the same time a little troubling. Mastering these skills will take some mental fortitude. Going inside and facing your own demons is not easy. Joseph Campbell called this the Belly of the Whale experience, after Jonah, who went into a literal whale’s belly. In a true mythological story, before the hero can destroy the monsters or bad guys of the real world, he must battle the demons that live within. This doesn’t mean you need to go deep into therapy and relive all the terrible things that might have happened to you as a child. But you will need to look at common situations you’ll be discussing with others. Admitting that you have doubt and anxiety isn’t easy. But you only need to admit it to yourself. No one else needs to know.

Practice Is Necessary

You might be able to get away with some of the pre-written patterns for some common universals a few chapters back. Being able to come up with effective cold reading statements in real time, however, will take time. One way is to simply take it one day at a time. After every conversation, you can go home and write about the elements of that particular conversation. The things the other person wants or doesn’t want. The things they are worried that are associated with those things. Then find out as many structural similar events from your own history and look at them in detail. Write them out structurally and practice describing them to another as a cold reading. Every time you do this, you will get better. Every time you do this, you’ll see a similarity between others and yourself. Every time you do this, it will get easier.

Lifelong Skill

This is one of those skills that will never be finished. You will never be good enough. This is like any other worthwhile skill, where the more you practice, the better you get. As this is a communication skill, the better you get, the more real benefits you will get. The better you’ll be able to read people and predict their behavior. You will become much more persuasive and influential. You’ll become a ninja of reading body language. This is a very powerful set of skills that will pay you back in many ways that you can’t possibly begin to imagine. it will take time, so go slow. Make a promise to yourself to write something down, every night, even for a couple minutes, about your observations of others. Do one thing each day to increase your cold reading skills.

Know Thyself

The better you get at these skills, the more you will not only know yourself, but you will have a deep understanding of others, even when you first meet them. And since everything in life revolves around interacting with others in some regard, this will therefore make everything in life easy. This one skill will be profitable, enjoyable and make you a superstar. Get started practicing today, and never stop.

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