Тони Бьюзен - Mind Map Handbook

All of this in support and as part of your Verbal Intelligence!

It is essential, therefore, that you look after this amazing instrument and learn to play it well. Before that, however, here is an amusing and true story to demonstrate the point.

Can I Sell You a Boat?

In Sweden, an unfortunately shy young man had just started his career as a boat salesman, and was having a singular lack of success. I asked him to show me how he used his Verbal Intelligence in a sales situation, which he proceeded to do.

He explained that there were three kinds of boats he was selling: little boats, medium-sized boats and very big boats (well over 100 metres).

His voice was a monotone, jerky, mumbled, lacking in energy and very quiet. More interestingly (and amusingly!) his body’s support of his words was not just absent, it was contradictory!

When he was describing the small boats, the only gesture he used was to hold his two hands up and indicate the size, as you would indicate the size of a fish you had caught. The size he demonstrated was about the width of his body. When he described the medium-sized boats, he jerked his two hands up and down for a moment and moved them slightly closer together!

When he came to describe the enormous boats, he once again jerked his hands up and down, and moved them much closer together! When he had finished describing the big boats, his hands were almost clasped in prayer!

His Verbal Intelligence score was approaching a negative number!

Your Verbal Intelligence rises with the degree of congruence between your body, voice and words. It sinks, as an uncared-for boat will, if it is disintegrated.

The reason for this disintegration often can be found in the words we use to help us think. These words and images have an immediate impact on your body and voice.

Think of feeling happy, successful and positively directed towards a good goal. With such thoughts your body will improve its poise and posture and therefore its overall presence. With melancholic, depressing and negative thoughts, your body will slump and lose both energy and presence.

A fascinating spiral is created.

When you think well with good and positive words, the instruments that carry your spoken Verbal Intelligence become more energized, alert and ready to give body to the words themselves. When this occurs, your Verbal Intelligence immediately rises. Your audience then also become more energized, and gives you more positive feedback. This increases your energy, improves your poise, …

To increase your Verbal Intelligence you must integrate positive thinking, physical health, your body language, your multi-talented voice and your words.

Here is another Verbal Workout to help you create this complete Verbal IQ package!

verbal workout

Word Puzzle Number 11

1. latzw

__ __ __ __ X

2. fyniot

XXX __ __ X

3. madyon

__ __ XX __ __

4. vibsuoo

__ X __ __ __ X __

Clue: Thinks you’re a genius. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

Verbal Intelligence Tip

Rest/sleep on it

Why?

Because, as you learned in the first of these Verbal Intelligence Tips in Chapter 2.1, your brain, as far as solutions to problems is concerned, is a giant incubator. If ‘immediate’ techniques have not brought the solution to light, allow that giant para-conscious brain of yours to work on it in peace. Don’t harass or worry at it – that will simply make your para-conscious retreat; just let it be, and it will work, like the ultimate genie, in your service.

You will all have noticed this phenomenon – when you have taken exams in school, or been asked a tricky question in a job interview, or simply when you needed a quick retort. It is the kind of situation where you know you know the answer or phrase you want, but it’s not quite in the forefront of your brain – more on the tip of your tongue but not coming off it!

Try as you might to grasp the answer, it is all to no avail. And then, infuriatingly, as you walk out of the examination room or interview, or when the other person is out of earshot, the answer comes flooding back in! Has it happened to you?! If not you are one-in-a-hundred, because for 99 per cent of the population this is a common occurrence. It happened simply because they did not know how to look after their ‘genie’.

You now do!

Word Puzzle Number 12

Circle is to globe as square is to …?

Study Your Voice

Study and observe your own voice in order to improve its range of skills. Remember – your voice is a musical and Verbal Intelligence instrument; you are the one person who can improve all its qualities.

Check, using audiotape recorders, friends’ feedback, your own self-awareness and (where possible) video feedback, the following:

Your general voice energy level

Your variation

Your projection

Your pitch (high to low)

Your tone (soft/warm/hard/cold, etc.)

Your general ‘sound quality’

Rate yourself on a scale of 0–10 on each of these areas, and start the improvement process.

Alternatively, join your local amateur dramatics association – perfect for developing your voice and body-language partnership!

Smile!

Smile at yourself and at others. Research confirms that when you smile at others they will tend to smile back at you. More than this, when you or anyone else smiles, the body releases positive chemicals, and becomes better poised. This leads to a more positive attitude, and therefore a more positive-vocabulary thought process. You can add to this power by ‘smiling to yourself’, giving yourself a radiance within.

Increasingly, businesses are encouraging their staff to answer phone calls with a smile. It relaxes the person answering the phone, and the caller can also ‘hear’ the smile, which helps put them into a more positive and cheerful mood! Perfect for customer-complaints departments!

Smile and the world smiles with you!

Smile and your Verbal Intelligence grows!

Check Your Body Language

Check for congruence/incongruence in your own and others’ body language and spoken words. Remember the Swedish boat-salesman’s story. Remember also that the more fully integrated, healthy, relaxed and honest people are, the more congruent they will be. Their body language will match their verbal language, and their verbal language will match their body language.

Check this in your own conversations and speech. Work towards an increasingly integrated approach in everything you say and do. Similarly, check for integrated body language in new acquaintances and friends, sales people, public figures, teachers, television broadcasters and (especially!) politicians. Your brain is designed to pick up these cues to help you survive, and The Power of Verbal Intelligence will help you to enhance these powers.

One simple way to check your body’s super-logical knowledge when you meet a new acquaintance, is to ask yourself:

(a) ‘Do I immediately like this person?’ and

(b) ‘Would I trust this person with my most treasured friends and belongings?’

If your answer to either of these questions is ‘No’, immediately go into your ‘Sherlock Holmes Verbal/Body Language detective’ mode, and find out the reason why your brain, so rapidly and brilliantly, came to such a conclusion.

As well as providing you with essential information for your continued security, success and happiness, this study will provide you with endless hours of entertainment and amusement!

Mirror Exercises

Stand in front of a full-length mirror and chat to yourself! There is not more to this exercise than ‘meets the eye’. There is exactly as much as meets the eye! For here, while chatting away to yourself, you will be examining every move you make, position your body takes, and expression your eyes and face make, while you speak.