It’s useful to control what people think. It can solve a lot of problems.

Exercising the power to control what people think is the end goal of a lot of individuals, companies, and entities. They do it to convince you to make a purchase, change the way you think, or motivate you to take action. Controlling what people think is not done spontaneously. There’s often great forethought and an agenda taken towards achieving this.

So you may not even know that external forces are influencing your thoughts. Further, you may not even know that you’ve given up your autonomy of thought. You may not know that you no longer have the power to make your own decisions.

If a company was trying to perfect the art of controlling what people think, how do they achieve this, and by what means?

A company can control what kinds of emotions you feel when you think about their products or services. It’s called brand perception. It’s a cleverly curated concept that takes a large team of people to shape and craft. And because of how powerful it is, perception is everything, even if perception is far from the truth.

People have a natural tendency to bias because they don’t have enough information to make a good decision or a good judgment call. This is used to control brand perception, which can work strongly in favour of the brand.

Having widespread influence is a way of controlling what people think.

If one person is convinced about something, it can trigger a chain reaction and speed up the process of getting the right number of people to reach critical mass. This is the usefulness–and also the drawback–of having one person hold as much power over others in controlling what they think. Instead of convincing a multitude of people, you only need to convince a select few.

Subliminal messages, and bias, carry great weight; for example, how many times have you trusted a brand even though you’ve never tested it or tried it out yourself?

Because of our hyper-interconnectedness, what used to take months or years to change perception, now takes as little as a few seconds. What used to be the slowest to change is now the fastest. Beliefs and convictions are no longer steadfast. Our thoughts are like chameleons, changing colours because influence is rapid and people are quick to catch on.

One can yield the power to control public perception, and hence, the amount of sales and the money that follows, to great effect. Building a public persona that might not necessarily be close to the truth is the aim, the end goal.

Why is it important to shape the image that the public has of you or your company?

Your aim might be to change people’s minds about a certain belief, or to introduce new ideas.

It’s the job of the marketer to convince people that a business is worth your time. They put an enormous amount of effort to convey to you why their product or service is the solution to your problem and why you should shell out the money to pay for the solution.

They also put in the effort to find the right people to amplify the message. Because messaging relies on a hierarchy of influence, you need the right people in the right positions of power to move a crowd into taking action.

How do companies and influential leaders control what people think?

How are mass movements created, and how can social action overcome resistance?

It helps if you have a person of authority. someone who is respected and thought of as an expert in their field.

The best companies have a person of authority as a weapon in their arsenal. As they fight for territory and for space in your attention, their power in swaying public opinion must be enough to reach critical mass. Herd mentality can be a good thing. If the message is of some benefit to society, having it spread like wild fire to goad people to take action without having to convince each of them individually can be a good thing. It saves time and effort.

We don’t have any autonomy. We’re not independent thinkers. When there’s an emergency, it doesn’t work for everyone to have their own personal direction. There must be a leader telling people to move one way or the other, instead of a million different independent movements. Otherwise, their action as a whole is inefficient. They move nowhere.

When fast action is required, when we need to do something quickly, and when  we need to cooperate to succeed, it’s useful to count on the ability to control what people think.

How to control what people think:

1. Be careful, and intentional, about your image, personal brand, or business brand, that you project to the outside world.

2. Get on board a person of authority or expertise to amplify your message.

3. Use words that have emotional connotations attached to them, moving them into action and making decisions faster.

Messages are everywhere. Some can get to the point in just a few words, like a slogan. Others take more time, whether it’s an email memo, resume, or job posting. So how do you make the most of the types of words that you use? How do you immediately answer the question, “What’s your point?” in a message that is clear and impactful?

We are bombarded by messages, every second of every day. Which do we pay attention to the most? Do we pay attention to the professor who’s droning on without noticing that students aren’t listening to a word they’re saying?

It’s the messages that grab your attention that are the most impactful. Sure, the message might be simple, and echo a lot of what is already out there, but you can be certain that they are impactful because they are packaged in a way that is easy to digest, and memorable.

When writing your message, you will wonder, how can you grab your audience’s attention when no one wants to pay attention to you?

In this blog post I will suggest several ways to get your point across so that your message is clear, impactful, and memorable.

1. Why no one is paying attention

If you find that you are not getting engagement with your message, there may be several reasons why no one is paying attention. For example, your message is too vague. Or, your message is too cliched, and not new.

Other reasons as to why you’re not getting your message across are:

You’re not clear on what you want to say.

You don’t know how to say it.

You don’t know why you’re saying it.

To solve these problems, really examine what, why, and how you want to say it. What is your intention? Every message needs a purpose and intention, or there’s no point in saying it.

Sometimes you are trying to communicate what you are trying to say, but run into the frustration of not getting your meaning or point across in the best way possible.

You could be crafting a script for your sales pitch, or trying to get your brand messaging perfect.

2. Less is more

The most famous slogans are short and to the point. There are numerous examples.

Ever see your audience nod off after your opening lines, or have your reader glance at your article without reading it? It may be because you are using extra words that obscure the point. Solve this problem by using fewer words. Use the minimum amount of words you can get away with while still getting your point across.

Pithy is the word.

Unless you’re writing some sort of oeuvre with a lot of flourishes, bypass the rhetoric. It would be best to hone down the main key words for more impact. Don’t bury your meaning underneath extra words.

It makes the reader have to work hard to find your hidden meaning, and by then they would’ve given up if they haven’t figured it out and moved onto the next shiny new thing. People aren’t going to dig deep to find your meaning because it’s too much work for them. That’s why you have to be straightforward and state it plainly and clearly.

3. Is your message garbled?

When your message is garbled, it’s like playing a game of broken telephone. No one can understand what you’re saying so they ignore you and move on to the next thing.

To cut through the noise and static, say what you want to say, but only give yourself ten to twenty seconds to say it. If you limit the time you have in front of your audience, it forces you to cut out anything else that doesn’t drive your point home. Meandering or rambling messages are ineffective. Your audience is left wondering, why should I care?

4. Why should I care?

That’s why messages that are the most impactful draw upon the empathy of your audience. For your audience to be empathic, your message has to be relatable. You must guide your audience towards your message by using emotions and feelings.

You must be engaging to make your audience pay attention to you. To increase the impact of your message, use forceful and powerful words, but limit synonyms.

5. Have a logical outline

Always have a beginning, middle and end. Yes, your opening lines can start at the beginning or even the end, but always lead the listener back to the beginning and start properly from there. Without this outline, your audience is lost. It’s like wandering around in the dark without a roadmap or flashlight.

Choose your words carefully. Be concise. Make your point known right away, or as soon as possible. Don’t wear out your reader’s patience. Don’t wait until the middle of your message to let your reader know what it is that you want to talk about.

6. Your closing

In your closing, you should have a key takeaway message. The takeaway message must be clear so that there’s no confusion about what you want your audience to do after listening to you to the end.

The takeaway message must be memorable and actionable.

Tie it up with a take home message. Your closing should refer back to your opening and answer the question, what’s your point?

As someone who has a lot of irrational fears, I worry about things that will never happen, and situations that will never materialize in real life.

Why do I do this? The main reason is that fear, and imagining and cataloging all of the bad things can happen, prepares me in a way. As anyone knows, preparation is the key to being ready for what materializes, so it doesn’t catch you by surprise. It protects you from danger by letting you know that you have to take action to be prepared.

But sometimes the need to be prepared can greatly exaggerate the actual danger until it loses all sense of proportion and has no real link to what can actually happen.

1. Is fear irrational?

The things that most people fear the most will never happen. These are irrational fears, fears that spring up without reason in your consciousness.

But first, not all types of fears are irrational. Some examples of rational fear are fearing for your health if you should find yourself in a poor physical or mental condition. Life and death situations, when they do arise, is another example of when fear is the right way to respond.

During other situations, your flight or fight reaction kicks in and you do anything to avoid danger, including exaggerating the one in front of you. Your instincts for self-preservation kicks in and overtakes your sense of proportion. Everything is heightened, including your sense of danger.

This is when fear becomes irrational, and leads you to avoid situations and places that cause that fear.

2. Don’t let anxiety rule your life and actions

In trying to guard your safety, your instinct for self-preservation can lead you to make decisions that you later regret. I can attest to that.

Don’t let fear run your life and make all of your decisions for you. Even avoidance and inaction, where you don’t consciously make a decision, is a decision in itself. You might be mired in inaction because it’s the safest route. If you don’t do anything, nothing bad will happen, right?

Making a decision can feel like opening the door and inviting in the monster to hide under your bed. You don’t like surprises, especially the ones that jump out from nowhere and scare you. When that happens, the situation becomes out of your control, inducing stress and anxiety. The effects of fear, stress and anxiety can be debilitating, such as high blood pressure and heart attacks.

But not all actions will result in disaster. I’m not saying that actions don’t have consequences, just that we make it seem more catastrophic than it actually merits.

3. Quell your imagination

When you are afraid, your imagination is overactive and will think of a million different ways that things can go wrong. You want to be prepared and the best way to do that is to familiarize yourself with all the worst possibilities that can happen. You forget that out of all these possibilities, only one or two has a small percentage of happening.

If fear is irrational, it will make up the missing reasons to stop you from doing something dangerous, filling in the gaps like your brain automatically does a blindspot so that the illogical jumps from point A to point B make more sense.

You start to believe this voice because it’s only looking out for you. It tries its best to dissuade you from seeing reality as it is. It will do whatever to keep you safe.

So to overcome that fear, quell your imagination. Don’t let it control your life. Remind yourself that your imagination is just trying to protect you from hidden dangers, but that these dangers would probably never materialize.

4. Defeat that irrational fear

Fear tests your abilities to cope at the pivotal moment where you either sink or learn how to swim.

Yes, fear is oftentimes irrational. People are scared of failure and this is where the practice of building resiliency is useful. I recall several moments in my own life where instead of trying, I quit before I even started. And these are the moments that I regret the most.

Now, I have realized that some fears are illogical. One of the ways that you try to make sense of fear is to find reasons to validate that fear. But now I have stopped looking for reasons to support that fear, and two of the ways that have helped are listed below.

One of the easiest ways to do that is to write down everything that makes you afraid. Keep a “fear journal” and make a bullet-point list of your greatest fears. Getting it in writing is like unburdening yourself of your fear. It no longer lives in your mind, unresolved and undealt with.

A second way is to re-condition that fear. Place yourself right in front of your fear and look it in the eye until you realize that nothing bad has happened. When you are no longer naive to that fear, it becomes second nature to face it and not run away from it.

Eliminate excuses. Make a list of all the excuses you have to avoid doing something.
Facing that fear makes you learn how to swim. You can be treading water for a long time, but at least you’re not stuck on shore watching life pass you by.

Get familiar with that monster. Once you know that it’s not as scary as it seems, it’d be easier to defeat it.

During the start of the pandemic, and right at its peak when the most deaths occurred, it felt like the world as we knew it was ending.

The situation was dire and it was escalating too quickly for people to get a handle on it. It led people to re-examine whether what they spent their time doing was really worth it. For instance, employees questioned whether their time was best spent working in jobs that were not fulfilling. They questioned their priorities. They quit their jobs, saw their businesses go bankrupt, or set up new ones. People hunkered down and stayed in quarantine.

The crisis of a world that was ending

During the crisis, there was uncertainty, and the feeling of not knowing whether there would be a tomorrow. No one was prepared for a world thrown in turmoil when the death count started to rise rapidly.

It felt like the apocalypse, and everyone was stressed out, waking up everyday in a life or death situation. Days were unpredictable. Doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers were burnt out, as well as most other people who had families to take care of and jobs to juggle (if they were lucky enough to have a job).

Just like any catastrophe that rocks the world unexpectedly, many predicted that doomsday was near. There was widespread panic as people stockpiled supplies and food, not knowing whether there would be enough for everyone to survive. Businesses that shut down had to lay off masses of employees.

We had to keep hope alive and trust that it would get better.

So if it’s the end of the world, what did people try to do?

They stocked up on supplies.

They stayed in touch with family and their loved ones.

They didn’t give up on hope.

People prepared for doomsday. It was chaos. There was panic buying as people stocked up on essentials and emptied the shelves at some grocery stores. If they imagined that the world was about to end, for several moments, it was a not-so-distant reality. School boards shuttered their schools to stop the spread of the virus and almost all travel halted. Many were unable to see their loved ones because the travel ban shut down major airports.

The post-pandemic era

Now that it’s been four long years since the start of the pandemic, the world has undergone a seismic shift and it hasn’t been the same ever since.

At the fourth anniversary of the start of the pandemic, many are reflecting and looking back at the lessons learned.

For instance, the pandemic brought to light many inequalities that plague society, such as the inequality for access to vaccines. There were efforts to make access to healthcare more equitable.

There were many deaths, but also many instances where people went beyond what was expected of them, to help out others in need. If there was ever a situation where people needed to work together, it was the pandemic.

Keep calm and carry on was advice you’d hear but didn’t pay close attention to. If there was ever a time to keep calm, it was during the height of the pandemic. It was a close call. Without people working together, the fear and the crisis could’ve been much worse.

How has work changed since the start of the pandemic?

During the pandemic, if they were lucky enough to keep their business going, employers are pressured to pay employees more, with better benefits and better work-life balance. The more unfortunate ones had to close their business.

Employees embraced remote work and a more flexible lifestyle. It allowed them to be more present with their young children, and for caregivers to look after elderly parents.

Lessons learned from the pandemic

People thought about what they regret, and what they wished they would’ve done when they still had the time.

The pandemic taught us to re-evaluate your priorities. What matters the most to you? What is most important? Are you more satisfied with your work life? Personal life? If not, it’s time to change things around.

Don’t wait for a disaster for you to realize that you have to live life to its fullest. Tell the most important people in your life that you love them. Make the most out of your short time on earth. There’s nothing like a major disaster to make you question your priorities. The things you thought were important suddenly don’t matter anymore.

The pandemic transformed the world in the space of a few days, and it could just as easily change again. Something unpredictable could happen that no one was prepared for.

It’s possible that after the pandemic, everything would go back to the way that it was. But don’t let yourself settle into complacency again. Take action and do every little thing you keep putting off. You’re alive, and it’s something to be tremendously grateful for.