VI. How to Evoke Specific Emotions in Someone

You can make your listener feel an emotion simply by talking about that emotion. How and why does this work? Remember what we refer to as The Pink Elephant Principle: Anything you describe to someone, that person imagines, simply to understand what you are talking about. The better you describe that experience, the more fully your listener understands and experiences it.

How do you describe something well?

1) Specify the experience in terms of the senses. That is, describe what can be seen, heard, felt tactilely, smelled, and tasted as part of the experience. Also, describe what can be experienced internally and subjectively—make an effort to convey every subtlety and nuance of your experience, no matter how strange those nuances might seem from a logical, objective perspective—describe what you imagine, say to yourself, and feel in your body as you process the experience. If, when you find yourself falling in love, it kinda-sorta seems as if there’s a glow around the other person, mention that perception. If, when you find yourself struck by a wondrous idea, a bing sound goes off in your head, mention that perception. If, when you find yourself feeling excited, the feeling is almost as if there are tingly red clusters of plasma-like energy shooting up from your palms to your shoulders, describe the feeling that way. Basically, you should allow yourself to elaborate on every aspect of the experience as thoroughly as might a wine critic, savoring a particularly fine vintage. The more you describe, the more your listener will understand and feel.

2) As you describe the experience, look and sound and act as if you are feeling the emotional state you are describing. The more you look as if you are feeling what you are describing, the safer your listener feels in following that experience. Bear in mind that people, particularly in English-speaking and Asian countries, tend not to be very expressive or skillful with the nonverbal subtleties of communication; the more expressive you are—the more you look and sound and gesture and act as if you are intensely feeling what you are describing—the deeper the emotional response you will elicit. Being very expressive is a major component of what is sometimes called charisma. On the other hand, if you don’t allow yourself to be expressive—if you don’t show emotion—you will tend to elicit weak or unenthusiastic responses from people. For that matter, women tend to desire more emotional expressiveness and intensity than most men demonstrate—so allow yourself to be more expressive than you think seemly, because, by and large, women find expressiveness and “passion” deeply attractive. Being emotionally expressive makes it much, much, much easier to get laid.

Let’s suppose you want to get your listener to trust you.

Example: “What’s really great is when you find yourself sharing a deep sense of trust with someone. Know what I mean? You know, the kind of trust that feels like there’s this soft golden bubble, this pool of energy, holding both of you inside, warm to the touch, softly soothing you and calming you, a feeling so warm and strong that it begins to flow inside you, deepening your sense of safety and total trust, expanding, spreading wide like wings, so much so that the feeling itself seems to say to you, your own sense of what you need and feel says to you, ‘You are safe, you are protected, you can open to this experience and feel and accept this experience completely.’ Now, with me, this feels great—this, with me, is the feeling. Maybe you feel good about feeling this feeling too. This kind of trust, real trust, this kind of trust is a great feeling, now, isn’t it?”

At this point, you may be thinking “That’s insane! No woman would listen to that kind of garbage without laughing at me!” It’s a reasonable reaction. But it’s wrong—that belief is what keeps men from getting laid, and keeps the women they meet from feeling the emotional satisfaction they intuitively know they can have. You’ll learn more about this kind of language, and why it works, as you progress further into this book. Let’s suppose you wanted to make your listener “excited”.

Example of an impoverished, ineffective description: “I had a good time playing football Saturday. It was pretty exciting.”

Example of a rich description: “I had a good time playing football yesterday. It was pretty exciting. I was so focused, the experience was so intense, that everything outside the game seemed to blur. You know, like the only thing that mattered was the game. And everything inside the game got hyper-sharp, all the colors and lines, all the faces, were just incredibly clear and focused, and the clearer everything looked, the more I felt pure excitement just ramp up inside me. It was as if every time I moved in to tackle someone, I just saw that person as if through a microscope—I could see the sweat glittering on the guy’s face, the blood under his skin, all the fear and rage and intensity inside him, you know? Everything seemed amplified, as if we were all wearing mikes, and there were loudspeakers in my head, everything pounding and crashing and colliding—the louder things became, the more exciting everything became. It was such a rush that I could feel waves of energy—this is gonna sound funny, but like hot red columns of light were just shooting from my shoulders to my gut, getting hotter and hotter, as I felt myself getting stronger and stronger, more and more excited…”

Et cetera. As we’ll explain later, women really like it when you ramble on and on, even about things that to you may not seem like they need to be said.

Here’s an example of evoking a state of passion. It dwells on putting together software, just to remind you that you can use any activity to evoke any emotional state.

Example of a poor description: “Well, I spent Tuesday night writing code.”

Example of a rich description: “Well, I spent Tuesday night writing code. Coding can actually be a very powerful experience—you’re creating this world of absolute possibility, within which anything can happen, but you’ve gotta build it out of matchsticks. Some people may not see how this can be the case, but with me, the more I think about it and experience it, the more I connect it to a sense of passion. It can be completely enthralling, like it’s pulling your attention irresistibly, a whirlpool sucking you in. Imagine building a skyscraper out of matchsticks. Everything has gotta be perfectly balanced, perfectly set—and all you’ve got is your own determination, your focus, your ability—really, your ability to feel passion. The passion begins with a hard, solid sense in your gut— and as it grows stronger, this hard dark solid thing begins to feel like a drum, pounding and pounding, pounding and pounding, deep inside you. Everything else seems trivial, and your intensity, your passionate sense that this is hugely valuable and important, gets stronger and stronger—and paradoxically, the more focused you are on the experience you’re creating and you’re now inside, the more whole you feel. It’s as if in surrendering to the experiencing of giving yourself completely to this, feeling every part of yourself, every ounce of your ability to feel, totally devoted to this, the more you find yourself learning and growing. Every little flickering character on the screen challenges you to find the one that should come next—or the one it really ought to be. You’re being challenged over and over again, and you sometimes want to pound your fist through the screen, and the screen seems to grow larger and clearer in your mind—everything seems to be growing larger and clearer all the time, as you become more and more consumed by this, in ways that feel more and more intense and rewarding, as you begin to feel that this aura of pure possibility begins to radiate out from deep inside you, and your thoughts become as penetrating and piercing and focused as a laser, able to make anything melt, through the heat of the desire inside you, and this laser begins to make you feel more and more in touch with what you truly want, as everything that it’s melting seems to combine all your doubts and inhibitions, carving away your fears, refining and strengthening your excitement and intensity, so as you realize those old things are now melting inside you, your passion and desire and intensity just get stronger and stronger, as the laser gets brighter and hotter …”

Yes, that description seems crazy. Still, such language has a powerful effect on women.

You may have noticed that the speaker mentioned the states he was trying to evoke over and over again. On the page, it doubtless looked repetitious. In conversation, though, people, especially women, are usually quite comfortable with repetition, for reasons we’ll cover later. You may also have noticed that each state was described in a number of different ways. That is, the description portrays passion as a balanced building of matchsticks, pounding drums, a laser, etc. Are these descriptions logically coherent? Nope—and they don’t need to be. They just need to paint pictures in a female listener’s mind.

Bad Poetry=Deep Arousal.

You may have also noticed that some of the descriptions present the symbol as doing different things. That is, the Laser of Passion in the example above focuses, melts, carves—it’s a Ginsu knife of cheesy metaphor. Why? For the greatest effect, make every image you conjure up with words go through at least three transformations, with every transformation accompanied by some emotional shift.

If you’re comparing surrender to, say, the experience of a droplet of water, at the moment it crosses over the edge of the Niagara Falls, say something like this: “At the moment it breaks from the stream--the moment its simple, forward progress is interrupted—the moment it breaks from routine and its old life, there is that moment of shock—but then, as it twists and turns in the air, as it begins its descent, as it expands and spreads wide, there is the feeling of discovery, the feeling of possibility. Sometimes, you know you’re experiencing something intense, and you just have to open up and take it all in. And as the droplet finally slams into the raging surface below, its false, internal limits broken as it joins the wider river, it spreading surfaces are overcome with joy at having been able to experience this surrender, knowing that the experience will now lead to even more powerful experiences, just because the experience of surrender to something powerful and important is now deepening in intensity…”

Talking about a single thing evolving through physical and emotional states tends to have a stronger effect than talking about a sequence of unconnected things, each of which happens to occupy different physical and emotional states. Evolution creates a narrative; presenting description in the form of a narrative makes emotional identification easier. The thing which undergoes changes becomes a character, and therefore “someone” with whom your listener can emotionally identify.

To evoke a state, talk about it at length and “paint a picture” of the state with words, while acting as if you are feeling it yourself.

Review

1. To evoke an emotion well, use a great deal of sensory detail. Specify what was sensed both externally and internally—what you saw as well as what you pictured in your mind, what you heard around you as well as what you said to yourself.

2. To evoke an emotion well, look and sound and act as if you are feeling the emotion you are describing. The better you demonstrate it, the better she’ll feel it.

3. Describe your images as going through at least three changes, every physical change accompanied by an emotional change. When a particular thing undergoes a series of changes, it becomes a character within a storyline, and a creature with which your listener can identify. In this way, even inanimate objects can become characters and sources of emotional identification.

4. Talk and talk and talk about the emotion you want to evoke.

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