Congruence is one of the most important things to have when persuading, whether you’re trying to get your partner to go along with your movie choice or closing a multi-billion dollar deal.
Yet congruence is hard to measure, though we know who’s got it and who doesn’t.
People that are congruent are one hundred pure. No internal conflicts. When they say a product is good, they believe it all the way down into their bones.
This is the main reason why Zig Zigler recommended that if you’re selling pots and pans, you’d better own the pots and pans.
So when you recommended them, people would believe you were honest.
So, how we increase congruence? Remove internal conflicts.
How do you do this? Integration of parts.
This may or may not be true, but it’s a useful hallucination.
Everybody’s got parts. When you want to eat ice cream, for example, part of you wants to enjoy the delicious flavor and texture, while another part of you knows that you’ll gain weight and feel terrible later on.
When you want to wait up early, part of you knows the benefit of early rising, but another part of you wants to continue sleeping.
When you get ALL your parts working together for the same goal, you’ll be incredibly congruent, fantastically magnetic, and irresistibly persuasive.
Here’s what you do. Take something you’re considering. Something that part of you wants, yet another part of you has doubts.
Sit there, and hold out each hand. Invite each part to come out. Get them in a dialogue.
Find out what they want. Find out why they want it. Get them talking about higher level criteria.
Imagine you’re an objective third party in some kind of union negotiation. What you’re after is for those two parts to ultimately agree that they’re after the same thing, and those two initial goals, which seemed to be diametrically opposed, are actually one in the same.
Play around with this, and see what happens.