This morning my 8 year old son Euan was eating his chocolate crispy thingies at breakfast when he suddenly announced to his mum.

“Mum, don’t think I’m being rude, but do you mind if Dad takes us to school this morning?”

Now how do you feel my wife felt? She felt hurt. Not because she didn’t want to take him to school because she’s always got a thousand things to do. Not because of being refused. The reason she felt hurt is because she was asked to think that Euan was going to be rude and before she even heard him, she’d convinced herself that he was going to be rude.

And when he wasn’t it didn’t matter. She’d convinced herself that whatever he was going to say, he was going to be rude.

Strange that. But logical.

You see if I ask you not to do something, the way we process this in our heads is to think of the thing we’re not going to do first, then we think of not doing it, as instructed. The net result, we think of doing it.

Don’t think now of a giant flying carrot.

And what do you think of? A flying carrot

Keep an eye on your conversation over the next day or so and listen out for the “don’ts” and “nots”. Most of us, me included, sprinkle our language with them.

In sales this can be disastrous.

“Don’t worry about the price yet” “It doesn’t matter that we can’t deliver on that day because we can…” “With our product, you won’t ever need to worry about competitor’s products”

But you can use this to your advantage.

“Don’t think for a moment you need to make a decision right now to buy this product”

Is quite harmless and will subtly suggest they should make a decision right now. “You don’t have to stop right now if you don’t want to”

Will confuse any browser to stop and listen to you as their brain interprets what you mean. Say it with a lovely tone and you’ve broken the ice without being pushy.

I know you’re busy right now, so you don’t need to worry about remembering this anymore.

I reckon you’ll not forget though.