The Negotiators Secrets

In the last few days I’ve been doing some significant Negotiating to My Family’s Own Best Good. My wife and I have been working to create (currently a surprise to the public) something new in our life. When we’ve completed the manifestation we’ll be glad to share our success (including photos). Because I’ve been Negotiating for my own personal best good, certain things have been brought home to me that I might overlook as a professional negotiator for other people and businesses.

One of the challenges that arises when you are negotiating purely for yourself or your loved ones is a connection the negotiator experiences that might be akin to being the chess piece that you are about to move (if that makes any sense). My wife of course has been participating in this process fully as well with her own understanding of negotiating (that reminds me of yet another aspect of Negotiations that I’d like to speak about.)

When we play chess and we decide to sacrifice the knight in order to expose the queen – we just do it because it is how we will win the game. However, when we are the king or queen and that knight that was just sacrificed is the family dog – your emotional connection to the negotiation in this chess metaphor can be like a giant tree fallen in the road before you, blocking the fruition of your intended negotiations.

What pollutes our Negotiating Excellence? The last time you thought you might negotiate then you found yourself backpedaling – what caused the backpedaling? What feeling do you experience when you step up to Negotiate and then suddenly it seems that negotiating at all was foolish? I don’t know what your answer is (though you are encouraged to share them with me via the comments section), but mine is fear. When I was a young man one of my favorite movies (I’m dating myself here!) was Dune. There is a scene in the movie where the “smart” guy speaks the following affirmation:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Fear is the Negotiation killer as well.  What happens to me when fear enters the equation is that I often forget what to say or do next.  How do I bring myself back?  What do I do to climb out of the dark hole of embarassment, guilt, shame and any of the other triggers of fear?  Well – if my fear hasn’t completely paralyzed me then I remind myself of Why any of us Negotiate at all, ever.  We have something to offer!  So, whatever you have to offer is truly the focus of a Negotiation for you, Negotiator!  You may ask 500 resourceful questions of the Negotiating Complement and his or her Targeted Resources, but if you cannot tie what they have to what you have then there is no Negotiation.

June is going to be the busiest month of my life in a long time.  I will do my best to post here daily.  I’m going to be working on more things to offer so as to become a greater resource for each of you.  Currently I offer a free Apprenticeship to those who want to really step-up their Negotiating Excellence!  If you are interested in receiving my Newsletter and/or joining my Free Apprenticeship Program then find the links to the right of this post and sign up today!

What have you done to Negotiate to Your Own Best Good?  What would it feel like to get whatever you wanted every time you opened your mouth?  Sign up today and find out!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

One of my most active clients has requested Negotiation Training for the specific use of courting his future-life-mate-to-be. Of course I start out by illiciting the ideal picture of my client. I then illicit the current “real” picture based on results and self-defined criteria of the client himself. One of the hardest things for any client to hear is what they are doing that sabotages their intentions. Usually a process that sabotages an intention is the result of a very passionately held belief that may have once served you but is currently a limiting belief.

His situation is that he’s had several unfulfilled relationships in the last 8 or 9 years. He really wants to step-up the quality of his mate-choice process and discover someone that is willing to commit for the long haul. As we began our training for this aspect of his life – I do what I always do – ask resourceful questions. When someone asks you a resourceful question, what they are really doing is examining your life. A resourceful question is almost always a question that you ask someone else that they themselves have refused or not known to ask their own self. Thus the essence of The Art of Asking Resourceful Questions is revealed by the relative significance of any question to the person being asked.

As I began my barrage of resourceful questions I soon discovered that my client had a low frequency of flirting as a result of having a vast array of rules governing his own process of flirting. I challenged his information and instructed him to practice every chance he was offered. This was quite challenging to him and he of course showed me his resistance. His resistance was-is a form of anxiety that is defined by unresourceful questions such as “What if I’m wasting my time? What if she’s not the one? What if she states on her myspace account that she’s not looking? What if she’s wearing a ring and I’m not sure if it’s a wedding ring or not..” His list was endless.

We have all played the “what if” game. When adults play it to prevent taking action – they can become self-oppressing. When I find a client has this much resistance to new information then the new behavior I help them install must be easy and simple – something they can do all the time in any situation without alot of thought. For this client the prescription was this: 1)Ask any woman you meet thoughtful questions and 2)Make her feel good. Of course he had a million questions and “what ifs” and so on. He didn’t like the specific instructions – he wanted to “get there himself” so he asked me for a metaphor as a guide. My metaphor was “Treat flirting like golf. When a woman appears before you in any situation think of the golf rule of “playing the ball where it lands”. So if you are in a restaurant, on a subway, walking your dog, jogging, parking your car, etc. that is the right place to flirt. He had another wave of questions for this of course. Resistance is as resitance does not.

The purpose of my instruction was for him to become masterful at flirting so that if he ever did meet the one he’d be ready for it instead of getting overwhelmed by his emotions and choking. Have you ever been in a situation where you knew what you wanted in a relationship but you had no idea what to say next to get it? Feel free to share your thoughts and comments or even your questions in the comment section or you can write me directly at justask@yourownbestgood.com.

What would happen if you were able to flirt for your own best good?

Bruce Burns the Negotiator!

My Marathon Master Minders met yesterday again. Fridays evenings are a stretch even for the self-employed. Half the group drives from San Antonio to Austin and then spends the night. We always let the person who went last (last time) go first for the current gathering. That put me last, last night. Anyway – one of the members was getting droopy eyed until I pulled out my white boards and began sharing my Master Idea. The idea I presented was so big and awesome that I couldn’t (still can’t) hold it all in my head. There is a techie aspect of it that’s at this moment beyond me, but within the first minute of the idea the uber-tech-techie in our group said ‘Oh my God – that’s a great idea.’ I presented the idea to the group almost with fear. It’s one of those ideas that takes alot of courage and determination to initiate and see through to completion AND you have to be vulnerable to great minds that might just say “No” anyway.

After presenting the idea to my Master Mind group and letting them tear it apart and show me the flaws – I felt like a million dollars – I take that back – I felt like a Trillion Dollars. My wife went off to parts unknown today as a celebration from the relief of the end of the work week AND getting taxes done before the deadline. Master Mind is so intense for me – I don’t want to party the day after – or “take a break”. Master Mind brings everything into focus and adds lots of valuable information to the participant’s game. My wife deserves her “break” AND I FEEL closer to manifesting the Visions in my Head so I’m paddling away toward the realization of those dreams.

If you have stories or experiences you’d like to share about any topics reflected here on my blog, please feel free to submit them. Ask questions, challenge the (my) information and Negotiate to Your Own Best Good!

I’ll see you at the Negotiating Table!

Bruce Burns the Negotiator

Greetings Negotiators!

Last night I had the great fortune of speaking with a woman named Kelly for the first time who had read The Attractor Factor by Dr. Joe Vitale. She was in alot of emotional pain and after reading a part of the his book she was inspired to contact him. Her call was eventually directed to my office. We spoke for over 2 hours and the topic of our conversation was RESOURCES.

If Negotiation is my strong right arm, then Resource Coaching is my other strong right arm. The first challenge when someone needs Resource First Aid is to re-direct their attention. When people are in a resource-depraved state – so is their attention. If you ask them what they notice about what’s going on around them and their life – they will tell you all that is wrong, broken and missing. I asked Kelly if she would be open to some training from me over the phone and she agreed.

Resource Coaching is a step-by-step technique. You must train the eyes to see where the feet need to go and get everything working in concert step-by-step. I was taking the first step with Kelly when she balked. She went from listening and wanting help to a long dreadful story about her life. I thought “We’ve slid off the road and now we are back in the ditch she probably called me from. I don’t like being muddy, so I washed my brain down and refocused to get Kelly and I back to the smooth clean road of Resources.

We stumbled up the incline to the road again and I put our “car” into gear and headed on back down the road trying to complete the “first step”. We were approaching the first step when suddenly she reached over (through the phone) and steered us right back in the ditch. It was like 8 or 9 pm when this was happening and I had already had a full day. I was “trying” to be “happy” about Kelly and I being in the ditch again.

This time instead of climbing back up the incline of our experience – I just stayed muddy with her as long as I could to “get” how she kept recreating the ditch result. I asked her lots of RESOURCEFUL QUESTIONS. Guess what I learned? She hated the word “resource”. I use the word resource in about every other sentence when I’m sleeping – you can imagine how often I might use it when I’m awake. So now I have to keep from laughing at the potential Mad TV skit that is arising from this experience: A woman in a resource-depraved state contacts me so she can really hike up her resources and I start giving her the Resource Remedy but she can’t stand to literally hear the word “resources”.

Would you have quit at that point? I did briefly think of hanging up so I could go eat dinner before 10pm but I decided since I had already uesd the words “Play Full Out” with her – that I had to be a model for those words or look like a snake oil salesman.

Staying in the ditch with Kelly (nice and muddy), I began to ask her questions about things that made her happy. Her level of resource-depravity was so strong that we had to sort through about 3 stories before I finally actually found a happy one. (The mud was starting to dry) On the third story of her son eating doodle bugs as a child – I discovered the word “doodle” made her laugh so much she could hardly think of what to do next – so I substituted the word “resources” with the word “doodle”.

We spent the next 30 minutes or so doing some “Doodle Coaching”. We quickly climbed out of the mud, got back on Doodle Road and I discoverd that the Resource Coach’s Fast Car was now a Doodle Bug (pun intended). Near the end of the conversation Kelly asked me if I knew anyone that did Energy Work. I have another client who I do Resource Coaching with and lo and behold at that moment (almost 10pm) she called me on the other line. I took the synchronicity as a sign I could finally have dinner so I networked the two women together and got off the phone.

In a Negotiation sometimes you have to be willing to either a) speak someone else’s thought-language or b) invent a new language in order to Manifest your outcomes. If all forms of communication are a negotiations then communication itself is the most prized negotiation-resource there is.