J D Fuentes - Gut Impact | Page 2

being experienced,
should that stimulus or datum be experienced again, the Gut will again
feel something of the strong feeling that came with it before. A
storehouse of experience and accumulated lessons, it relies on habit
rather than planning or decision to guide its responses. The Gut can
distort or delete new information in order to maintain present habits and
beliefs. It understands and communicates with bodily feeling, bodily
movement, metaphor, and a vast range of subtle cues.
The Head makes plans and expresses ideas in words.
The Gut provides or withholds the emotional energy necessary to
carry out your plans and make your words compelling to others. It
expresses itself through the way your words actually sound and the way
you look and move as you say them. Guiding action in accordance with
its habits and impulses, it frequently overrides the Head’s plans,
decisions, and ideas.
To change someone’s behavior, you must change the emotions
associated with that behavior; that is, you must move the Gut.
This, incidentally, is why debates rarely change the opinions and
emotions of those with strongly held beliefs. Debates are intellectual in
nature; the Gut easily deletes and distorts inconvenient facts. This is also
why insights spawned in the therapist’s office and resolutions made on
New Year’s Eve are both so often to no lasting effect; products of the
Head, they may not have the support of the Gut.

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4. The Means, or What the Gut Wants
Words produce thoughts and gut responses--even words not so
charged as power and money and sex. And words that seem to us true,
words that exactly match what we are already thinking or that match
what we can see and hear and feel, make us pay attention and eager to
hear (and feel) more. This is because the instinctive part of the mind is
engaged by having its own experiences and perceptions, its own model of
the world, fed back to it.
The instinctive part of the mind is always seeking sustained,
accurate feedback; when it receives it, it opens up so as to learn and
experience as much as possible.
When the mind opens up like this, it’s easy for it to think and do
things it otherwise would not or could not.
We can also put the matter this way:
On a rational, analytical level, the Other person (hereafter called
O) wants new information, wants to understand things, wants to make
plans, wants to get from point A to point B.
On an emotional, instinctual level, O wants information that is
true—that is, information which he/she can verify with his/her eyes and
ears and fingers, or information that fits what he/she already believes.
To make someone completely focused on what you’re telling
him/her—to engage that person’s instincts and imagination, express an
uninterrupted series of things which he/she can verify with his/her senses
as being accurate, and/or an uninterrupted series of opinions with which
he/she agrees.
We will cover this in greater detail shortly.
When you say many things your listener can immediately verify as
accurate according to his/her sensory perceptions and abstract
beliefs, your listener’s emotions become engaged and his/her
imagination opens up.
Exercise
Usually after spending a little time with somebody you can get a pretty
good feel for the sorts of ideas with which he or she would agree, and for
the ways he/she views things. Just for the sake of loosening up a bit and

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getting into the habit of trying things out, try the following simple
exercise.
1) Sit down and talk with someone, such that you can see his or her
face.
2) At one point, speaking at a relaxed pace, express several ideas in a
long unbroken series which you think will accord generally with
your companion’s worldview, or better yet, offer a long series of
statements--at least six or seven--which you’re pretty sure your
companion will feel are true and factual. You can say anything from
the “The sky is blue” and “We’re sitting in an office” to “It’s true, I
should have married you long ago,” depending on what you think
your listener will agree with.
3) So that there is a smooth flow between these statements, link them
with prepositions such as and, as, while, so, since, and because.
4) Observe his or her response.
Example:
“You’ve been sitting at this table for at least thirty minutes, and
I see you’ve been sampling some of their coffee, and we’ve
never seen each other before, and I know nothing about you—
nothing about where you’re from, or what you do, or where
you’d be right now if you could be anywhere, or what you’d
most enjoy doing if you were there...”

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5. The Elements of Communication, or Talking with More Than Words
Every time you communicate effectively and powerfully with
another person, several things are taking place.
First, you are conveying a sense of similarity and shared
understanding to your listener.
Second, you are inviting the listener to experience something he
or she hasn't personally seen or touched or heard or tasted, or some fresh
aspect of an otherwise familiar thing.
Third, you are engaging the listener’s Gut, making the listener
feel that watching and listening to you feels good.
Obviously,