Technique #28 Comm-YOU-nication

Start every appropriate sentence with you. It immediately grabs your listener's attention. It gets a more

positive response because it pushes the pride button

and saves them having to translate it into "me" terms.

When you sprinkle you as liberally as salt and

pepper throughout your conversation, your listeners

find it an irresistible spice I'm sure when they recover the flight box from the Fall of Man

under a fig leaf in the Garden of Eden, it will convince the world

of the power of the word you. Eve did not ask Adam to eat the

apple. She did not command him to eat the apple. She didn't even

How to Be a" You-Firstie" to Gain Their Respect and Affection 113

Technique #28

Comm-YOU-nication

Start every appropriate sentence with you. It immediately grabs your listener's attention. It gets a more

positive response because it pushes the pride button

and saves them having to translate it into "me" terms.

When you sprinkle you as liberally as salt and

pepper throughout your conversation, your listeners

find it an irresistible spice.

03 (093-142B) part three 8/14/03 9:17 AM Page 113

say, "Adam, I want you to eat this apple." She phrased it (as all big

winners would), "You will love this apple." That's why he bit.

Comm-YOU-nication Is a Sign of Sanity

Therapists calculate inmates of mental institutions say I and me

twelve times more often than residents of the outside world. As

patients' conditions improve, the number of times they use the

personal pronouns also diminishes.

Continuing up the sanity scale, the fewer times you use I, the

more sane you seem to your listeners. If you eavesdrop on big winners talking with each other, you'll notice a lot more you than I in

their conversation.

The next technique concerns a way big winners are silently

you-oriented.