Greetings Negotiators!

One of my earlier mentors was Anthony Robbins – author of Unlimited Power, Awaken the Giant Within and so much more. Part of my training under his tutalage was a process called “false neuro-association”. It basically means when someone links a relationship between two things when there is no such relationship. For example – if a 5 year old hears your horn honk the moment his touches the handle on the car – he might create a temporary (we can hope) false neuro-association between the horn and the door handle.

Tony’s example is much more entertaining than mine and the punchline is “It’s the Knight”. His reference for this FNA (false neuro-association) is made doubly funny because if you don’t know the story then you might hear Tony say “It’s the night” – thus another FNA.

Sleepwalking

Uncovering your FNAs can be very much like joining Alice in Wonderland down the the rabbit hole. This evening as my wife was going to bed – I had a gourmet platter of my own FNA served to me. Suzanne asked me why I had slept in a different bed last night than I usually do. I had no idea what she was talking about. She said “Yeah, I saw you in the other bed that didn’t have any sheets on it- I thought you slept there cause I was watching TV.” I told her she must have been mistaken – I woke up in my usual bed this morning feeling quite rested. She laughed at me and reassured me when she went to bed (after me) that I was snoring in the “other” bed. She wasn’t that fascinated with the topic after I got to chewing on it and she went right off to sleep.

So, my “doorway” currently has a Chineese tri-fold blind in front of it until I can get my custom made door installed there, which means that I got up in the middle of the night, while Suzanne was making noise and watching TV, sleptwalked out of my bedroom “past” the tri-fold blind (somehow), hunkered down in an unmade bed with no sheets or pillows or even a blanket then after she went to bed, sleptwalked back to my normal bed past the tri-fold blind again and tucked myself in without ever knowing I had left.

I remember reading a Dean Koontz book once where the government would take people that had seen a UFO and put them in a long coma while head-sets played constantly on a loop about what “really” happened until they were re-conditioned with the new “story” in order to protect the public from the truth. It’s so easy to dismiss things because we don’t believe it til we see it. Now that I know that I’m busy doing things while I sleep, perhaps I should leave a recording playing as I fall off with a to-do list on it.

I suspect the inspiration that is emerging from this story is a new course called Negotiate while you Sleep.

One of the most helpful habits you can ever develop for anything – especially Negotiations is to day-dream practice. Or do a mental practice. For those of you who don’t know what that means – it’s simply putting yourself in the exact place with as many details as possible via your imagination and then practicing in your head whatever skill you are trying to develop. The body doesn’t know the difference between mental practice and the real thing.

When a client tells me of a situation where they need Negotiating Help, I immediately put myself in their shoes and begin this “practicing” as a way to understand what they are faced with and what their response has been thus far. You could say that the difference between a novice Negotiator and a Pro is simply how effective either can be with conjuring up the overall Negotiation in their head then navigating their way through it with Negotiating Excellence.

I’m quite curious about sleepwalking so if you have any information you’d like to share or a story or even a question then please share it via the comment section beneath this post or just send it to justask@yourownbestgood.com.

What would happen if everytime you opened your mouth you got exactly what you wanted? If you haven’t already seen The Negotiation Checklist then sign up for my newsletter-mailings and download it today!

I’ll see you at the negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!