How To Talk To Humans
How To Talk To Humans
"Transforming Language" or, The Rumpelstiltskin Effect
In this episode, Larry Wilson explores the transformative power of language and how choosing the right words can change the outcome of a situation. By clearly naming and defining a problem, it often loses its grip and becomes easier to resolve. Larry illustrates this powerful concept through the classic story of Rumpelstiltskin, showing how language, understanding, and naming the issue can make even the most difficult problems disappear.
Hosted by Larry Wilson
Produced by: Verbal Ninja Productions
Producer: R. Scott Edwards
Sponsored by: The Wilson Method
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Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is How to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now, I can only do it with humans. If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies extraterrestrial, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in the show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world, and their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during the course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. Thank you very much. I'm so glad you joined me again for another episode of this podcast. I spoke on a previous episode about the idea of language being shifted and language being transmogified to affect your perception of the world around you. And it kind of led me to a question that was maybe will make that clearer, that I sometimes think of as the Rumpel-Stiltskin effect. It's very odd. And if I have it wrong, here again, as always, I hope that some of you will write to me at Larry at WilsonMethod.com and show me the error of my ways. But my childhood memory of the Rumpel Stiltskin fairy tale is that there's a young woman who has a baby. Well, I've already got it wrong. I don't remember. Somehow there's a young woman who's very attractive, and I think she has a baby, and the king finds out about her. Somehow, in the midst of all this, she makes some boast, or her father makes a boast, that she can spin using a spinning wheel that's used for turning raw wool into a yarn, that she can spin straw into gold. And I may be condensing this story a little bit, but the king sends emissaries, I guess, to kidnap her and bring her to the castle, where she's locked up in a room with a spinning wheel and mountains of straw. And I feel like she must have a baby or something. Oh no, I can't remember. I'll tell you what I do remember. You'll see in a moment the salient part of the story, that the king says she won't be let out of this room. She won't be allowed to go home unless she can actually spin the strondigle. And of course, she can't, you know, no, you can't spin strondigle. And she's distraught and she's crying. And then a little creature is I don't know how else to describe him in fairy tales, he sort of maybe he's an imp or a gnome of some kind, a little man, and he has magical powers, and he makes a deal with the girl. He says, I think he I think the the little imp wants the girl's baby and says, if he spins the straw into gold, will she give him the baby? And she's so distraught she says, yes. Not good parroting. I'm sorry. She got herself into the situation, she should not be bartering her baby away just because this imp has magical powers. But he does, he spends all night, spins all the straw into gold, and the king is astonished in the morning to find these piles of gold here. Now, what would you think? We've talked in other episodes about the power of storytelling. What do you think would happen? Would the king say, thank you for spinning all the straw into gold? You may go home now, your work is done. No, of course not. Well, if I have one room full of gold, I want two rooms. So the king insists, no, she has to spin more straw into gold. And of course, the girl is, you know, horrified she can't. Anyway, she somehow summons the imp back that night, and he spins more straw and gold. And so this continues. So it's sort of out of the frying pan into the fire. She's still trapped in the castle, she still can't go home, and the imp is going to claim her baby. So the whole story is really getting spinning out of control. But there's a escape clause. And somehow in the story it comes up, she says, you know, uh, can't I somehow convince you not to take my baby? And the imp says, no. And the imp says, if you could guess my name, you would be freed from this arrangement. Now, please don't email me complaining about the illogic of this story, because I must confess I can't follow why the imp would make this escape clause. It's like everything else, you know, in fairy tales. I can't really follow it. But how she discovers his name, I honestly can't recall. But she discovers his name is Rumpel Stiltskin. I'm at a loss for words. I don't know where that name. But he reappears, he spins more gold. I think he has her baby with him. Anyway, she says, your name is Rumpel Stiltskin, and he disappears in a puff of smoke. This is the only salient point of this fairy tale I wanted to talk with you about today. Because the Rumpel-Stiltskin effect is just an expression I coined to discuss uh the phenomenon that means it's very difficult for you to address any kind of problem or challenge you have if you do not have the language to describe it. This can be a personal, emotional situation. You may have a psychological barrier that stops you from achieving some goal of yours, or it may be a very practical, real thing that you know you have to do something to be able to accomplish uh a goal of yours, and somehow you're barred from that somehow, you aren't able to break through that barrier. The Rumpel-Stiltskin effect is a very, very real effect. That when you are able to discuss something, this necessitates having the language, the vocabulary, uh, the understanding of really expert communication skills to be able to discuss what may be very complex or maybe very subtle, but a problem, a barrier, an impasse. When you are able to discuss it, because you now have language, very often it disappears in a puff of smoke. Some of you listening may think, oh, Larry's speaking metaphorically. No. I mean, well, sorry, I guess I should say yes. I don't mean there will actually be smoke present. What I'm trying to say is that it very frequently causes your problem to dissipate as if it was not really a barrier at all. It may be easier to understand if it's a psychological problem. Sometimes people talk about how difficult it is for them to speak in a presentation situation where they have to get up to do some sort of public speaking in front of a group. And it's one of the things I address in my boot camp. We do specific exercises to show how easy it really is. And for people who are paralyzed, there was a young girl named Emma who trained with me uh in boot camp, and we were in a big convention hotel, and it was a two-day boot camp as it always is. And at the end of the first day in the lobby, I ran into a friend of mine who was conducting a seminar of his own in another part of the hotel. And he said, Oh, oh, he said, Tomorrow, could I get you to bring your people in? I could just introduce them to the people in my group. I said, Sure, yeah. And so I asked my people, I said, How do you feel, Nell? I said, Oh, great, great. I said, Don't expect any big deal. I mean, I think it may just be him saying, Oh, here's a guy I've worked with, Larry Wilson, here are the people he's working with, hello, and we're out of there. I said, Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. This guy I knew got my people up in front and said, Oh, this is these are the people training with Larry Wilson in his Wilson method two-day bootcamp. And he, with a microphone, this is a room about 80, 90 people. He went up to them one by one, said, What's your name? What do you do? What was your biggest challenge in communication? What have you learned so far? And I was astonished at how well they handled everything, and they had great answers. And when he spoke to this young woman named Emma, he said, What's going on here with you? She said, Well, she said, before I did this training with Larry, if I had to speak to three people at a time, my hands would start shaking, I'd get all sweaty, I'd start to both stumble above my words, you know, I couldn't get the words out clearly. She said, but we haven't even completed the second day of training with Larry. And she said, All that's gone. She said, Do I seem like I'm uncomfortable? And this is in front of a room of like 80 people who were staring at her. And this friend of mine said, No, you you kind of seem like you've been doing this all your life. She said, Yeah, it's kind of amazing, isn't it? Well, that was because of the rumple stiltskin of that. Because in the course of training, we were able to identify a specific thing that was making her self-conscious and making her edit herself and double-check herself and everything, self-consciousness does not serve us well at all. And so it's not at all unusual when you're able to identify these things and use language to describe them. When you're able to actually describe what the problem is and where it comes from, very frequently you find it just evaporates and is gone. That's what I refer to when I talk about the Rumpel-Stiltkin effect. I have so much more to share with you next week. I hope you'll be back then for another episode of How to Talk to Humans. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it at thewilsonmethod.com. There's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human. Send me an email at info at wilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey. And you'll be with me for the next episode of How to Talk to Humans.
