You can’t affect your height, facial structure, or background.

But you can affect your speech. Nothing else will bring you more success.

How to speak well and gain massive respect.

A thread, by The War Father:

Whether you like it or not, you will be judged harshly by what comes out of your mouth.

Abe Lincoln said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

But if you keep your mouth shut, you will never get to use your most potent tool.

1. Speech is Important.

There are a few things that people are primed to pay attention to.

It’s why height is correlated with income, and why studies show we trust good looking people more than uglies.

Of the “judgement factors,” speech is the most important.

Some men just have it.

When they open their mouths, everyone else stops to listen. Why is that?

Somehow they can immediately convey, “I am an important person. Listen to me.”

Being able to speak well will make your colleagues respect you, and your bosses want to promote you.

I was not born with this gift, but I sure as hell made a point of learning it.

I regularly have to speak in front of apex predators. Men who have seen things that would make you shiver.

But they’re just people. So I learned how to speak well, and it has served me well.

2. Tonality is King.

Too many ppl think if they can make a convincing argument, they’ll win respect.

Sorry, humans aren’t robots. What you say isn’t as important as how you say it.

Words move people logically, but tonality moves them emotionally, and emotions drive the train.

Watch Barack Obama speak. When he raises his voice, or takes a tactical pause, or gets quiet.

There is no easy way to learn this. You have to watch masters at work.

But if you want some reading, Jordan Belfort has a book called Way of the Wolf that is an excellent primer.

Some pointers, to get you started.

- Get quiet, people lean in.

- Raise your voice just a little bit, they get alert.

- End on a question note, they get uncertain.

- Make a “sound reasonable?” tone, they tend to agree.

- Get a bit emotional, they trust you more.

Watch this clip from Wolf of Wall Street.

Don’t pay attention to what DiCaprio is saying, but how he’s saying it.

The question note to start, to prompt uncertainty.

Emphasized confidence (voice raising) at tactical moments.

Leaning in and getting quiet, to seem secret and important.

These are the cues that the listener’s hindbrain is using to make emotional, not logical, decisions.

3. Words are Important, Too.

Unless you are Barack Obama, your mastery of tonality isn’t enough. People will put attention to the things you say.

But they aren’t looking for airtight logic or brilliant wordplay.

They’re looking for a story that makes sense.

You may wonder why an account run by a operator is always preaching about myth and story.

People are my business, and I know what drives people.

We are not computers; we are humans. Our thinking is based on a deep evolutionary drive to create narrative from noise, for survival.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a moment here to reference my previous thread on exactly this topic. https://twitter.com/warmoneymindset/status/1327608378588323840?s=

Dan Harmon, the creator of Rick and Morty, who has worked on other successful shows, such as The Simpsons, has a theory that all good stories can be broken into 8 steps.

He calls this “the story circle.”

The consequence of the story circle is that people prefer narratives that follow a familiar pattern.

You should try to emulate this pattern when possible.

Let me show you, with one of the famous speeches in American history—

The Eisenhower D-Day speech.

Compare the elements of this speech to the story circle.

Eisenhower tells the Allied Forces that they will embark on a great crusade (enter an unfamiliar situation).

They will bring about the destruction of Nazi Germany (get what they want).

But it will not be easy, the event is well equipped (pay a heavy price).

However, they will prevail (return, having changed).

Eisenhower understood how to craft a compelling speech.

For sending troops into D-Day or making a Rick and Morty episode, the principles are the same.

4. Preparation and Practice is Key.

You may be reading this and asking, “how can I possibly keep all of this in my head when talking to people?”

That’s easy: you can’t.

Speaking is hard, and you should always prep for it.

If you know that you have to speak to new employees tomorrow, spend tonight pencilling what you want to say.

If you want to go into your boss’s office to talk about something, spend 15 minutes gathering your thoughts.

Even short preparation will yield unbelievable results.

You also need to practice.

Nothing will ruin your tonality like quivering in your voice. If you are nervous, all your preparation will go out the window.

So find opportunities to speak. Speak to people on Xbox Live. Talk to the cashier.

Confidence is a muscle. Exercise it.

Over time, you will become better at this.

The tonality will occur naturally.

Your speech narratives will fall into place according to the story circle and good storytelling principles.

Like anything else, diligence and practice are key.

Great speakers run the world.

Become one of them.

// The War Father

If you liked this thread, please share!

If you want to learn more about how to speak and present yourself, there are precious few Twitter accounts that cover this topic.

Here are some good ones.

@TuckerMax
@UnmodernM
@DentesLeo
@C_Holmes44
@robertgriker
@OneJKMolina