People Will Believe Appearances
You can help people open their minds to the reality, facts, evidence and truth
Things are not always as they seem but people will still irrationally choose to believe, with conviction, what they perceive, because it is easy for them emotionally and psychologically. Heuristics, or mental shortcuts that can be wrong, are a thing!
That sobering reality can mean big trouble for you.
The sad fact is that sometimes people just don't want to believe or seek out the truth and open their mind to learn that their thinking is inaccurate or grossly biased. It's far less taxing and therefore much easier to believe factually-deficient, credible-evidence poor narratives.
It reminds me of a line — and an encouraging one — in a television episode of the old series, Elementary (photo above), where Sherlock Holmes tells his work partner and friend, Joan Watson:
"There's a story here and we can help tell it."
What do I mean by that? Simply that you can piece together the true story in a compelling manner that is reasonable, honest, factual, surprising, interesting and skillfully, humbly explained with evidence and proof. That can assist you in gaining some level of open-mindedness, trust and support from someone and also place helpful doubt in the minds of others who are clutching to deceptive narratives with holes.
It’s important to understand however that when doing this you must absolutely tend to people’s (critics and doubters) emotional reasoning by acknowledging the possible and likely emotions, and do so without coming across as insensitive or condescending.
Things are not always as they seem and other people can slowly come to see so too and agree with you, lessening the reputation harm and increasing recovery of your good name.
Michael Toebe is a reputation consultant, advisor and communications specialist at Reputation Quality, assisting individuals and organizations with further building reputation as an asset or ethically protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
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