Persuasion is an incredibly powerful ability.  It is the ability to be able to get others to do what you want them to do.  Or to be more specific; it is the conscious act of getting someone to do what you want them to do.

Through persuasion you are able to get others to focus on you exclusively.  You can focus their attention so that you become the center of their world.  This attention can be conscious or unconscious, the difference being that the person that you are trying to persuade is either aware or unaware that you are now controlling the focus of their minds.  When you have this total attention, you are able to change their beliefs and emotions so that they act differently from what was expected.  The more attention that you can get from someone, the easier it becomes to change their minds.

Persuasion is the interaction between you and other people.  It involves words, gestures, and body language.  These are all used in conjunction in order to tell an enticing story.  This communicative effort allows you to refocus the other person’s mind on to thoughts and ideas of your choosing.  You become a magician of sorts that weaves a spell which allows your audience to see and feel what you are saying.

Any kind of communication is a kind of persuasion.  Any communication is the act of having ‘the other’ completely understand what you are trying to express.  To do this you must therefore be able to get the other to see and feel what you want them to, using metaphor and grand gestures in order to express yourself in the best way possible.  The real difference between persuasion and regular communication is that with persuasion you are consciously trying to get a certain response from the other.

There are many techniques and abilities that can be learnt in order to become a better persuader.  The fundamental principle though is the ability to be an incredibly good storyteller.  Your ability to grab someone’s attention and to have them completely experience what you are saying involves the ability to captivate others through the magic of your words and gestures.  This is definitely a skill that can be improved.  It is a skill that requires attention and effort because it is so important in our daily interaction with others.

You might try to develop your own ‘persuasion play’; this is a planned act that you design yourself, using proven techniques, to persuade others to do something that you want.  It is essentially a technique that you develop and keep for when you need to persuade someone else.  You can use any number of procedures like body language, voice pitch, eye contact, and metaphor to try and deliver and impactful message that will be able to persuade another person to your way of thinking.

Persuasion then is a natural action that we all do everyday, but there is a difference between our conscious doing of it and what we all do naturally. True persuasion is a conscious act with a definitive objective. True persuasion can be improved and perfected so that it becomes a powerful tool in your arsenal. This type of true persuasion, is the key to interpersonal relations and therefore the most important skill to develop for all of us. Become a master of persuasion and the world is your oyster.