Last week I got a call from an acquaintance of mine. He said, 'Remember that conversation we had about Africa a few weeks ago? Well, I just checked my e-mail and you won't believe it. I won an international lottery originating in Africa. You know, I'm just convinced everything happens for a reason, don't you think?'

I thought for a few moments and I responded, 'You know, I think you're right. Everything does happen for a reason and really it's a good thing that we're talking right now.' I went on to explain that I personally win probably three or four international lotteries a day and none of them are real.

I got to thinking about this conversation and I realized that people look for supporting evidence for what they want in their environment. In this case, here he was remembering our conversation, then he received an e-mail talking about winning a lottery from Africa and somehow he kind of put two and two together in a way that didn't add up. That's when he began talking about everything happening for a reason.

Unfortunately, I had to burst the bubble in order to keep him safe, but the point of it is why did he use that language? This language pattern is going to knock your socks off and enable you to influence and persuade in a very deep and profound way.

Why do people look for supporting evidence for what they want in their environment? Oftentimes they do this because our world is very unstable. Whenever there's a tremendous lack of stability, with everything kind of up in the air, people start turning to religion, they start turning to God, they start turning to spirituality and they become more superstitious.

If you don't believe in God, or you're not a spiritual person, my point is not to influence you towards or away from anything except towards a language pattern or away from not being as successful as you like, that you'll be able to use these patterns for your benefit and for the benefit of your clients. As I explain this pattern to you, please understand, my goal is to break things down in a way that gives us tremendous power with our language, our words and persuasion, and in so doing, help you to have more success in your life. That's my purpose in this discussion.

When I said, 'everything does happen for a reason' it means that I'm alluding to something more than simply what he's just referred to and that's really important that he understood. Then I went on to say, 'Good thing we're talking'. Again, this implies that there's perhaps something more than what he was just thinking about. That set the stage for me to have entry into his mind and to help him to understand the difficulty that he was about to face.

People look for supporting evidence for what they want in their environment and I believe it's our job to give it to them. There are language patterns that are in the popular lexicon right now that we can use to our advantage very powerfully.

Let's say you're an adviser and you're talking with someone, and they say something positive like, 'Wow, it's a good thing that I'm talking with you here today because I feel like I'm really getting somewhere in my learning, in my understanding of how all this works.' And your response could be, 'Fantastic, after all, there are no accidents, right?'

Is that a stretch to say? I don't think it's a stretch for anybody, no matter what our belief system is. After all, everything happens for a reason, it's just a matter of whether or not it's a reason you like.

No language pattern is an island and our goal as persuaders is to layer pattern upon pattern and these patterns piece together a deeper sense of reality when you do this right, what you're going to be doing is using all sorts of these patterns at high speed.