A person’s past is a very powerful thing. Your past defines parts of who you are as a person, for the experiences you’ve had, shape your personality. When I think about my past, I think about how happy, yet sad I was. I had an existential crisis at a pretty young age, because my thoughts about how I came to be, could not be figured out.
Every significant experience I had, taught me a lesson. And that’s life. “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death” (Albert Einstein).
Old people are usually wise, for they’ve been knocked down way more times than people of my age for example. They’ve had way more experiences that taught them how to handle different situations and how to make decisions for future purposes.
Some people say: “Your past is in the past”. I believe this to be true, yet your past is not something you banish from your thoughts. It’s a thing that will always follow you. Getting over your past doesn’t mean forgetting it or running away from it. It means getting through it, learning from it and remembering it.
I certainly have had experiences that I wanted to avoid, but couldn’t. I had to deal with it and by doing that I learned how to handle difficult situation nowadays better. I learned how to stand up for myself, fake confidence and talk to people (I could work a little harder on the talking part though, but it’s way better now). These are crucial skills that are essential in all aspects of life.
With every day you live, the whole amount of your “past time” gets bigger, which means a longer line of (self-)education. I can’t wait to become wise and live a life I don’t regret. Dwelling in your past is something that might cause that from what I’ve figured out. Here’s some advice. Like the great Rafiki once said: "Oh yes, the past can hurt. But you can either run from it, or learn from it” (Rafiki, the Lion King).
How Do We Persuade?
Persuasion is not the key to success, but the keyhole. You see, without a keyhole the key has no purpose and the door to success can’t be opened. I was just trying to come up with a creative example to draw you in, but I hope my point has come across. What I’m trying to say is that persuasion may not be the solution to becoming successful, but it’s very very helpful.
Persuading is not easy. Not everyone is born with great persuasive skills, yet from a young age we do start learning it. We persuade our parents to give us more money to buy clothes or go out, we persuade our teachers to give us more time to finish an assignment and we persuade our friends in sharing that last piece of cookie they have.
There are three ways to do so. The three basic elements of persuasion are called ethos, pathos and logos.
First lets talk about ethos. Ethos is an appeal to ethics. It’s a way to refer to the writer’s character, credibility, authority, trustworthiness, and believability. To improve in ethos you should not only be trustworthy, but you should also have a certain expertise in the topic you’re talking about.Another way to persuade through ethos is to analyze your audience. Who are you trying to persuade and by finding similarities between you and your audience, you can adapt towards that. “The key for any speaker is to establish his own point of view for the audience, so they can see the game through his eyes” (Ronald Reagan).
Second is pathos. Pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions, feelings, values, morals or beliefs. The purpose of pathos is to provoke an emotional reaction from your audience. To ameliorate your persuasion skills, ameliorating your use of pathos is an important step. Pathos is really easily abused, for it’s easy to play on people’s emotions. Emotions are a powerful thing and it can overthrow logic anytime. So pathos should be used legitimately and without manipulation. Also, language has a significant effect on emotion. By using different words while saying something can trigger different senses and feelings.
Last, but not least is logos. Logos is used to appeal to the mind, intellect, reason, and logic of readers. You persuade your audience by being logical.Logos is the most important technique of persuasion. Giving reasons is the heart of argumentation, and can’t be emphasized enough. When you ask your parents for more money to buy clothes, they would always ask to give them a reason why you need it. Here’s where you convince them by using the beautiful logics of your brain.
Now, dear “how-to-persuade-learners/readers”, I hope this was helpful and that it may lead you to success in life you so desire to achieve.