How you can use “Verbal Judo” to deal with people like a police officer

One of the biggest sources of stress in people’s lives is other people. Counselors and psychologists say that when people come to them to talk about their problems, they often talk about the other people in their lives who are causing them grief.

One of the best ways to deal with other people can be found in a book called “Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art of Persuasion” by George Thompson, a United States police officer.

I’ve read many books on people skills and “Verbal Judo” has changed the most of what I actually do in real life.

Verbal Judo is simple, once you know its main concepts:

1. Stay calm if other people are getting upset. Don’t get swept up into the emotion of it all.

2. Find out where other people “are”. Are they lonely, angry, depressed? Are they even listening to you when you speak? Where “are” they? What state of mind are they in? You have to be able to read body language and have emotional intelligence to do this.

3. Talk from their frame of reference, not yours. So often we say what we have to say, when the other person might not be listening, for example, or when what we say isn’t what the other person wants to hear. Their mind might be on something totally different than what we’re…