Changing People

You can’t change people. You can only inspire a change through your words, your actions, and the way you live, or support their decisions once they are ready to make a change.

Change comes from within. It can’t be triggered solely with logical arguments, or otherwise, everybody would have healthy habits. There is a largely neglected emotional aspect to change. 

It takes love, but more often, it takes pain. When external circumstances force change, they rarely do so in a peaceful way: it took a pandemic for companies to dive into remote work.

Trying to change someone’s opinion usually results in the opposite reaction: they will only resent you for it. Take Socrates or public debates for example, no losing party ever loses track of its own interests and changes its mind. It only creates anger, envy, proud ignorance, and attitudes of self-retreat. 

Humans don’t like being told what to do, so a skillful influencer will create the illusion of self-started change: “it’s already in you, you just have to take it to the next level”. It’s easy to argue what defines humanity, and move the needle from there to achieve a desired outcome.

Leveraging tribe effects is also a powerful asset. People are more likely to change through peer pressure, it’s just part of our biological programming. Start with people who take no convincing, and use your newly formed group to acquire more members individually.