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convince them in 90 seconds or less
Cause and Effect
We all have an innate urge to explain why things
happen. The best tools we have for this are cause-
and-effect statements. There are two ways to make such
statements. One is to attribute the cause to something
outside of you: “That idiot in accounting put me in a bad
mood.” The other way is to attribute it to something
inside you: “I’m a genius!”
Of course, neither one of these attributions is always
correct, but the key to finding out which one is right often
lies in the use of one simple word—a word that is one of
the greatest connectors there is. That word is “why.”
Kids know this. They’re great interviewers. As far as I
can tell, they’re preprogrammed to ask “Why?” “Why are
we going in here?” “Why is he wearing that thing in his
nose?” “Why are you driving so fast?” It’s innate, natural
curiosity. And sooner or later, that innate curiosity gets
squelched, minimized just like a computer window, by
adults who’ve almost been driven mad by the incessant
“Why? Why? Why?” of their kids. But it’s always there
inside us, operating in the background, even when we’re
adults and think that it’s gone.
We evolve as a species through logic, reasoning,
comparing, and, most important, processing feedback.
Curiosity—the instinct that goes with “why”—is a critical
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