Source: Robert A, Yourell
Select the situation, and fully express your thoughts about it.
Repeat the thoughts with better organization and priority.
Distill the thoughts by leaving out unnecessary detail.
Distill the thoughts further.
Continue distilling until you end up with a slogan.
Practice improvising off of your talking points.
Continue, but with more of a challenge.
Add vision and passion.
Have more practice sessions on this material in the coming days. Test.
D.V.P. stands for Distillation Plus Vision Plus Passion. This process allows you to take a cloud of reactions and ideas and turn them into very tight talking points, like the ones politicians and salespeople have, in order to communicate in a compelling way. This is an excellent way to prepare for a situation in which you feel that you have too much to try to say to a manipulative person or too many emotions to manage for clearer communication.
Step 1: Choose a situation and fully express your feelings about it. #
Think of a situation such as those mentioned in the description of this pattern. Run everything that you think about the situation through your mind, or write it down, or say it out loud by yourself or to a friend who can help you with the exercise. Include those thoughts that you would like to communicate, whether or not you actually should.
Step 2: Reiterate the ideas with more organization and priority. #
Do this again, but allow your thoughts, now that you have run them through your mind, to fall together in a more orderly fashion, with a better sense of your priorities.
Step 3: Distill the thoughts by leaving out unnecessary detail. #
Do this again, but this time leave out any unnecessary details.
Step 4: Distill the thoughts further. #
Do this again, but leave out more details that aren’t absolutely necessary for you to say what is most important.
Step 5: Continue distilling until you end up with a slogan. #
Keep doing this “distilling” process until you have boiled it down to something that resembles an ad slogan, such as Apple’s “Think Different,” or Dolly Madison’s “Nothing says lovin’ like something in the oven.” It’s okay to risk going too far since you’ll have no trouble beefing up the message with more details.
Step 6: Experiment with improvising from your talking points. #
Imagine the situation in which you’ll want to communicate your message. At first, make it easy. After you are comfortable with this, try bringing out various aspects of your message by improvising off of the key points that you have boiled your message down to. Remember to limit yourself to only the most important and compelling parts.
Step 7: Continue, but with more of a challenge. #
- Imagine the person you need to communicate this to. Have them try various manipulative gambits to throw you off. This is how they manipulate you and abuse their power, most likely. Imitate your key talking points, no matter what they say. You probably know them, or people like them, well enough to imagine a good variety of distracting, intimidating, or simply irritating comments that they might make.
Step 8: Include your vision and passion. #
Get in touch with the positive vision and emotions that you have in connection with each talking point. Make a mental note of the outcomes and values underlying the talking points, as well as how you truly feel.You have positive emotions driving you to care enough to communicate about this. Even if it was a negative situation and set of emotions such as being fed up with intimidation or other boundary crossings, you can work your way back to a positive vision, such as respect for boundaries, human dignity, and productive relationships toward whatever your common goal is. Be sure you are only connecting with the positive vision and the positive, inspiring emotions that flow from that connection. Infuse your voice with this, and practice speaking from this emotional place. Practice until it comes out in a smooth, compelling, grounded manner. If this is a challenge, It’s good to sleep on it since your unconscious will be working with this pattern in your sleep.
Step 9: Have more practice sessions on this material in the coming days. #
Sleep will do wonders for this. After doing this pattern, your unconscious mind will be working to extend your intimacy with these talking points and your ability to improvise in communicating with them. Keep practicing in the coming days when you get a chance to fantasize, such as while doing dishes or driving. Practice out loud now, because good muscle memory and actually experiencing your own voice and vibration in this pattern build your personal power and ability. In between, listen to some of the great speeches by people who were good at putting compelling emotion and vision into their voices.
Step 10: Test. #
As you take this skill into the real world, notice how people listen to you and respond to your vision, emotions, and talking points. Continue to use this pattern for other important communications. Any conflict or leadership situation is a good one for this pattern. Any sensitive communication with difficult people is good for practice. When you are practicing in your mind, you can show your unconscious mind that it can be confident. For example, you can imagine the other person being just one in a crowd of a thousand people listening to you up on a podium with a microphone. Then accept the Nobel Peace Prize after your speech. When you hear ad slogans, think about how much work went into boiling down a rich message into them. Notice how the commercials and many nuances of the product and its presentation are aligned with this.