How to Convince Someone to Believe in Anything

By M.Farouk Radwan, MSc.

Psychology of Convincing Someone

Convincing someone to believe you is all about convincing him to either accept a new belief or update his knowledge or beliefs about an existing idea.

Not all people will accept your ideas from the first attempt but the good news is that there are rules that can increase your chance of convincing other people to believe you.

If the person you want to convince has prior knowledge or experience about what you're trying to convince him with then your primary goal is to shake his beliefs and to prove him wrong. After doing that you can present him with your own idea.

If the person does not have a previous idea about that thing then you can just start by telling him about your beliefs right away.

Why Can't I Convince Other People?

Before learning how to convince someone to believe in something or to accept your idea you should first know the reasons that generally make people oppose ideas and new beliefs:

  • Belief Conflict: If one of your friends told you that the earth does not orbit the sun, what will be your response? Of course you wont believe him since you already know that all nine planets orbit the sun. You already have an opposing belief and that's why you didn't believe him. So the first obstacle that faced your friend when he tried to convince you to believe in his idea was your belief system.
  • Knowledge: The greater a person’s knowledge about something the harder will it be to convince him. What do you think will happen if you tried to convince an astronomy professor that the sun is only 1000 km away from the earth? He'll never believe you because he already has deep knowledge about the subject and he might provide you with scientific proofs that go against your claims. Thus the second obstacle to convincing people is their level of knowledge about the topic. As you may have already noticed, the first two obstacles (old beliefs and knowledge) can be grouped under one thing which is having another belief that contradicts with yours.
  • Skeptics: Skeptics are people who doubt almost everything and everyone. They never accept anything unless they are sure of it. If you are dealing with a skeptic person then this will add further difficulties.

How to Convince Someone to Believe in Something

Based on the previous obstacles we can come up with counter techniques that can increase the probability of your success when trying to convince someone. Those techniques are:

  • Shaking His Existing Belief: The more assertive and confident you sound while talking about your belief the higher will be the possibility of shaking the other person's belief about that thing (provided that he does not have much knowledge about it). Speak in a confident way, use confident body language gestures, use a confident tone of voice and you will find that the person is starting to doubt his own beliefs.
  • Undermine His Knowledge Base: Even if you were confident while talking the person's knowledge base could act as a barrier to convincing him with your ideas. That’s why convincing a person that you know more than him is more important than convincing him with your idea itself. If you managed to convince the person that you know more than him then you will become a trusted source for his subconscious mind. As a result it will become much easier for you to program him (see subconscious mind programming for more information on this). You don’t need magic to do this, you just have to be ready with proper documentation and solid facts. The more clear your evidence is and the more you will be able to undermine his own knowledge base the easier will it become to convince him with your point of view.(See the power of knowledge in negotiations).
  • Provide Proofs for the Skeptic: Contrary to common beliefs skeptics can believe in anything provided that you give them clear evidence to support your idea. The more clues you can provide to strengthen your argument the less skeptic the other person will be and the easier will it be to convince him.
  • Program His Subconscious Mind: The subconscious mind can be programmed by repetition: the more a statement is repeated the more it can shake an already existing belief provided that 1) either the conscious mind is absent or 2) that the source of the idea is trusted. For more information on programming someone’s mind check out this guide. You can even program someone to fall in love with you, in my book, how to make someone fall in love with you i pointed out how can repeating certain words or phrases result in making someone fall in love with you. Its no magic, beliefs are formed by repetition and if you managed to repeat a certain belief enough times a person may actually start to believe in it too
  • Believing in Your Idea: Did you notice that when a person strongly believes in an idea he usually manages to convince others to believe in it too? The entrepreneur who believes that his idea is worthy usually succeeds in building a very good business. The more you believe in your idea the more confident and convincing you will sound when talking about it.
  • Repetition and the Law of Attraction: You can program someone’s mind over time. Each time you meet him talk a little about your idea then leave him. The phrases you have said to him will not be removed by his subconscious mind but instead they will be stored until something reinforces them. For example, if you kept telling your friend that he is a poor driver, he may not believe you until he happens to have an accident. When this happens he will remember all of your comments about his driving skills and he will be convinced that you are right. (See criticism and the law of attraction to know why this happened and to learn how to use it).

2knowmyself is not a simple article website nor it’s a place where you will find shallow fixes, but it’s a place where you will find effective techniques that are backed by psychology and that are presented in obvious and understandable format. If you think that this is some kind of marketing hype then see what other visitors say about 2knowmyself.The book How to make someone fall in love with you was released by 2knowmyself.com; the book will dramatically increase your chance of letting someone fall in love with you.

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