Aristotle’s Art of Self-Persuasion — How to Use Ancient Rhetoric to Change Your Life
Episode Stats
Summary
The ancient art of rhetoric has shaped political policies, influenced social movements, and shaped legal arguments and cultural narratives throughout history. It s been used for over 3,000 years to persuade other people to change their lives. What if you could use it to persuade yourself? My guest today is the author of aristotle's guide to self-persuasion, and he explains how the same rhetorical techniques that great leaders and orators have used for millennia can be turned inward to help you change your life.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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the ancient art of rhetoric has shaped political policies influenced social movements structured
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legal arguments and molded cultural narratives throughout history it's been used for 3 000
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years to persuade other people to change their lives what if you could use it to persuade
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yourself my guest today says you can j heinrichs is the author of aristotle's guide to self-persuasion
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and he explains how the same rhetorical techniques that great leaders and orators have used for
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millennia can be turned inward to help you change your life we discuss how to identify your soul
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like your internal audience use the concept of kairos to turn chaos into opportunity create
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hyperbolic moonshot goals that inspire action even if you fall short and employ ethos pathos and logos
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to achieve the habits and goals you aspire to along the way we talk about how jay used these
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self-leadership tools to go from barely being able to walk to the tempting athletic feat physiologists
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told him was impossible after the show is over check out our show notes at awim.is self-persuasion
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all right j heinrichs welcome back to the show well thanks brett it's nice to be back so we had you
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on the show way back in 2020 to talk about your book thank you for arguing which is all about reviving
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the lost art of classical rhetoric to persuade others you got a new book out but this time it's
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about using aristotelian rhetoric to persuade ourselves to be better people and you talk about
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at the beginning of the book that it was sort of a midlife rut that kick-started you exploring whether
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you could use classical rhetoric to improve your life and become a happier person tell us about what was
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going on there back in my late 50s i was suffering from this illness that should be familiar to
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a lot of men our age middle age and older i was depressed and i was feeling very sorry for myself
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in part because i had this physical problem it's called snapping hip syndrome it's disgusting the
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iliotibial band which is this tendon that stretches from the knee to the hip was catching on my hip bone
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on both sides and what happens when that happens is you fall down you literally can't move and and the
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reason for this tends to be when you get a really tight butt like your gluteal muscles are contracted all
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the time and stress can cause that sitting down too much can cause it all kinds of things can but
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basically what was causing it was that i was just tight like you know all wound up and so doctors
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had we talked about surgery and they said maybe i'd be able to walk again afterwards so that was out
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and i tried pills i tried everything nothing was working until one day my doctor said she'd found
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somebody who would understand me because i didn't want to just be able to walk normally again i was
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able to walk with a limp but then my hips would catch and i'd fall down again and not be able to walk at
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all this guy had a new procedure who might be able to fix me but i thought that wasn't enough
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because in order to do the incredibly painful physical therapy i wanted to do something more than just
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being able to walk and i had been a trail runner back through my 30s and 40s not a great athlete but
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an enthusiastic one and so i thought how can i possibly talk myself into doing all that it would
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take and my wife came up with this idea which was to persuade myself she had mentioned the work i'd
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been doing with clients i'd work with nasa with harvard fundraisers and she said have you thought
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about persuading yourself for once i hadn't but my wife is really smart i do everything she says
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and so i gave it a shot i made that attempt okay so you're gonna get a treatment for your snapping
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hip syndrome and this treatment it involves getting a lot of painful injections it's very unpleasant and
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then you have to do some arduous physical therapy on top of that and you decide if i'm going to be
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doing all that i want to push myself not only to walk again but to run again so you've got this big
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challenge ahead of you and to convince yourself to take it on and stick with it you decide to persuade
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yourself to do it and at the beginning of the book you say this bold statement that if you're going to
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improve yourself you know get a little bit better in your life whether you want to accomplish some goal you
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have or overcome some obstacle the master key is self-persuasion why do you think self-persuasion
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is the master key for us to make changes in our lives well you think about it in order to make a
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change you have to do something and usually that means changing your habits right getting rid of
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the bad ones and acquiring new ones and aristotle was the philosopher of habit his books almost
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all of them talk about habits and how to do that why because habits put you on autopilot you don't
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have to make choices whether or not to exercise if you simply do it every day i mean you think about it
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if you floss every day that's a lot easier than deciding whether you want to floss in one particular day
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which is you when you think about it kind of disgusting right and tedious you know going in
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between every two teeth the same thing works with diet or exercise or practicing a new instrument
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or learning a new language all these things that make a change in your life for the better require
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a lot of discipline a lot of motivation and where do you get the discipline and motivation unless you can
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talk yourself into doing it and that's where persuasion comes in so the idea my wife had was
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what if i could use those tools of persuasion on audiences in general or markets all the work i'd
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been doing over the decades and applying them toward myself to gain these habits that would allow me to
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make the change i wanted that's what this is all about yeah i've noticed in my own life any change
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i've made it's because i i actually wanted it like i convinced myself this is what i need to do
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and we can convince ourselves with the tools of rhetoric that people like aristotle wrote about
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2 000 years ago so let's talk about some of this stuff so typically when we think of rhetoric it's
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about persuading an audience when we're persuading ourselves we're the audience but what exactly does
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that mean like what part of ourselves is doing the persuading what part of ourselves is the audience
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yeah what is the audience when you're the person doing the manipulation and at the same time the
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one being manipulated so i this was a big problem i mean when my wife said why don't you persuade
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yourself i the first my first reaction was well how can i be the you know the rhetorician and the
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audience at the same time so i i did a deep dive in aristotle reading books i really hadn't gone
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into in the past and i came across this really weird little book titled on the soul and so the
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way aristotle describes it your soul is this ideal version of yourself it's the person you wish you saw
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in the mirror so you think of what's an ideal boy scout and i was a pretty unsuccessful boy scout
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myself but i still remember what a boy scout is supposed to be see if i can just from the top of my head
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the scout law right is that what it is so a boy scout is trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous
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kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean and reverent that almost duplicates what aristotle wrote
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about as the ideal soul it's like the ideal boy scout it's not who you are but it's the soul that
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represents your best self as opposed to your daily self that you know eats dunkin donuts or whatever
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so the question is how do you find that soul you know where is it one philosopher claimed to locate
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the soul he said it's in your pituitary gland but a better way to do it a more useful way to find your
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own soul is to separate your wants from your truest needs separate your wants from your needs this is
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what aristotle told us to do so our daily self wants things but those things make us fatter or less
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healthy or simply you know flatters our ego we take a job because we think it's prestigious and even
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though we know it will make us miserable your soul is telling you no don't do that whereas your daily
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self is saying i'm going to take this because then you know people will respect me your soul because it can
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be such a nag you know if you really pay attention to it thinking what do i really need what is it
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that's important to me that could be pretty annoying i mean when i was working on my own soul or
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discovering it i kind of wished my soul would do something stupid and embarrass itself in front of
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strangers you know the way i do but my soul is my audience and my job is to convince myself that i'm
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worthy of that audience like i'll show it i i really can live up to it and i found that to be
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a really powerful tool because it allowed me to use all the other tools of rhetoric sort of thinking of
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my soul as an extension of me or maybe something that's deeply internal to me but something that's
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a little different from my daily self and and that way i had an audience i could persuade okay so
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just make sure i understand this the the daily self is the audience and your soul is the persuader
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or is it the opposite it's the opposite so your daily self is the one every day that tries to prove
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you're worthy of your soul okay so you know if if you're about to skip a workout say you say to
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yourself what's my soul gonna think because i need to convince it that i have the kind of character
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that's worthy of it and at the same time there are other things you can do to sort of manipulate the
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soul and i'm hoping we can get into that and those are the tools of ethos pathos and logos i love that
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so you're looking for a way to help yourself admire yourself in a way exactly and you're when you're
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helping yourself admire yourself that admiring self is your soul it's your better you it's it's like
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they're really the coolest most awesome impressive part of you the deep down it's who you truly are
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okay so your soul is the best part of yourself that's your audience and your day-to-day self
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is the persuader and you want to use your day-to-day self to persuade your soul that you're worthy of it
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and one rhetorical tactic that's inspired by the ancient greeks that can help us persuade ourselves
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is this idea of kairos it's k-a-i-r-o-s what's kairos kairos is so cool and it's funny that so few
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people study it i kind of hope they'll start so kairos is what helps you determine what your goals are
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and what your big achievements are going to be so kairos is the art of opportunity and it's a way of
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interpreting the most chaotic moments in their lives now i think we're going through as the world
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and a nation in particular we're going through a very chaotic time we don't know what's going to
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happen things are very confusing it pure chaos now what's interesting is the ancient greeks and romans
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actually saw chaos as an opening so a kairotic moment is this time of crisis this chaotic moment
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those who can keep their heads can push through this opening this gap and in fact the original
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chaos in greek where we get chaos from means gap it doesn't mean you know horror it means something
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that just is something you need to go through and if you look at great moments in history or great
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inventions in technology they tend to happen at the most chaotic times and in rhetoric that's called
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the kairotic times it's the best time to take action so now where aristotle comes in on all this
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is in his theory of rhetoric so one way to understand kairos is to think in terms of the tenses so
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and aristotle described the rhetoric of each tense past present and future so the past tense if you're
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thinking about chaos and kairotic times like the time we're in right now we tend to think about
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going back to the past and somehow restoring you know the better days but the past tense also has
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to do with crime and punishment like who made this happen and they should be punished what went wrong
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who's to blame now that's can be useful it's not entirely something to ignore but then also people
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use the present tense which is all about values what's right and wrong who's good and who's bad
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so we tend to attack people who were the bad people who caused all the things the bad things we think
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are happening today and aristotle actually said if you want to make a change in your own life as well as
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in the world you need to focus on the future and aristotle called this kind of rhetoric that focuses on
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the future deliberative rhetoric so you've got the past the present the future which is going to
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actually fix things that's what you need to focus on and so i'd tell a story in my previous book thank
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you for arguing about how my son george when he was 15 used up all the toothpaste in the bathroom and
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when i blamed him he was making fun of me because he had heard me lecture about rhetoric at the dinner
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table for years but he said when i yelled at him saying who used up all the toothpaste he said
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that's not the point is it dad the point is how are we going to keep this from happening again
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now see what he was doing he was switching the tense from the past tense crime and punishment
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to the future tense how are we going to fix things and by the way if you're ever in trouble for something
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or someone blames you for something or calls you a name or whatever you can say call me whatever you
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want or i may or may not have screwed up but how are we going to fix things that's deliberative
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rhetoric and in a time of chaos these chaotic moments when we have a tendency to panic return
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to the old days or get angry at people deliberative rhetoric lets us say how are we going to fix things
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how can i use this time to make things better or to get better myself and so back in my own
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chaotic moment when i was having this late midlife crisis my aging body and this depression i was in
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i found very confusing this doesn't seem to be me deliberative rhetoric and this idea of kairos
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made me reframe the situation i thought i'm not drowning in a whirlpool maybe i'm looking at a gap
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and the question is how do i get through to the other side of that gap i love that so yeah instead of
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thinking about oh if i could only just go back to when i was 30 or 40 or what happened you know what
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could i have done differently using that past tense in this chaotic moment you had you thought
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you focus on the future what can i do now what can i do to make things better exactly and it's a great
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way to understand what the situation really is without getting all panicky and negative about it
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and yeah if i wanted to go back and be a not so awesome 30 year old it's in a way thinking about
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this kairotically in terms of navigating some gap you know the gap was between my youth and old age
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and what gets me through that is being an awesome old guy and so anyone can use this so let's say
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you're a guy and you're in a job that's just making you miserable you can see this instead of like it's
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just terrible it's like well this is this is a moment of kairos this is an opportunity to exercise
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exercise my ability to harness the future like exercise my ability to improvise and take action
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right and one way to do that is if you're thinking in terms of gaps what exactly are the gaps what
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first of all what's making you most unhappy at work can you fix that while remaining in the same job
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and if you can't what are the solutions and the other thing is what's blocking you what's blocking
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you from getting another job what's blocking you from fixing the things that make you unhappy at work
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so you think in terms of obstacles the obstacles don't necessarily prevent you because there's
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always some space between them that's what chaos is all about and kairos allows you not just to
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choose where the gaps are but when's the best time to act so another rhetorical tool you talk about that
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we can use to persuade others but we can maybe use to persuade ourselves are tropes i want to talk
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about a specific trope here in a bit hyperbole but just generally what is a rhetorical trope a trope
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is anything that plays pretend i mean if you see it that way it pretends something is not exactly what
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it is so a metaphor is the most common trope if i say the moon is a balloon you know the moon is not
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some inflatable bit of rubber but it's like one and so if i say it is one you start seeing the moon a
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little bit differently you think about it floating there's a lot of unconscious you know brain work
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that goes on if somebody uses a metaphor then there is other metaphors like irony where you
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pretend to be serious when you're saying something else i mean every teenager uses irony when somebody
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drops a tray in the cafeteria and they yell nice you know as if they're complimenting the person
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and in the southerner southerners especially southern women will say bless her heart oh yeah you know
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not exactly praising so those are what tropes do they pretend one thing while actually meaning another
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and they can actually change people's whole views of reality okay so one trope that you used is
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hyperbole before we talk about how you use it on yourself hyperbole on yourself what are some
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examples of great rhetoricians using hyperbole in their speeches oh my gosh so hyperbole is the
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trope of exaggeration right where you say something is is bigger or more important or tinier for that
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matter than what it really is in real life and then pretends that that that that exaggeration is a true
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thing so if you look at every great successful revolution of every kind they start with a hyperbole i mean
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you think about well the american revolution this gaggle of you know british colonies not all of whom got
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along all that well with each other decided that they were going to push off the greatest military
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power in the world the united kingdom and at the same time create a brand new political system that
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everybody around the world will someday imitate that is totally hyperbolic so when you think about it
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all the great visionaries were hyperbolists you know i think apple computer that arose out of this
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crazy hyperbole that people would have their own personal computers at a time when massive mainframes
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you know and terminals maybe in everybody's home was the vision of the day so you know you think about
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that if you ever want to do something amazingly great first you have to sort of believe in the
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impossible and that by definition is a hyperbole if you can get people to believe it that's a trope
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yeah another famous hyperbole jfk's moonshots speech we choose to go to the moon in this decade
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you know because we had just put someone into space and the idea we're gonna get someone on the moon
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like that was that's big in a decade yeah that is like and we didn't even have the technology
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to do that yeah i mean that's brilliant it's a good and you know part of that speech that's really
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interesting is he said we're gonna do this and do the other hard things he said what's really
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interesting about that is one way i started thinking about the hyperbole is if you have this
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grand moonshot goal it actually helps you think about all the other hard things it makes you believe
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you can do the other hard things as well even if you're failing at that one goal i mean imagine
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if we didn't reach the moon in 1970 but it took a few years more even then we would have been so
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far ahead in technology and you know beating the pants off the soviet union and all that good stuff
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that it would make us believe we could do other things and the fact is we did achieve it and it made
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us believe in all the other things as well that we could do the hard things in general so how did you
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use hyperbole in your quest to maybe overcome your snapping hip syndrome the etymology of hyperbole
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comes from two greek words hyper which means above or beyond and bully which means to throw so bully is
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actually where we get the english word ball so hyperbole literally translated means to throw
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beyond a hyperbole throws beyond actuality which is kind of this amazing work in the imagination but
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it's more than that and i thought personally in my case what if i created my own like capital h
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hyperbole i would create an image of myself as this record-breaking athlete now i never was a great
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athlete i was an enthusiastic outdoorsman at best but i would prove you know even though i couldn't
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walk well and it looked like my condition may worsen to the point where i'd be in a wheelchair
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i would prove my hyperbole by being the first person over 50 to run his age up this classic mountain here
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where i live in new hampshire olympic skiers have been using it for years to test their fitness
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only a dozen people had ever run their age which means reaching the top of this mountain in fewer
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minutes than they're old in years and i'd be the first old person to do it the first over 50
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never mind the fact that doctors had told me i'd never run again and two physiologists told me that
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even if i were a good you know old athlete they thought it was physically impossible to do because of
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the amount of oxygenation you need to have in order to run up this very steep difficult mountain
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in fewer minutes than i was old in years and that was to be my hyperbole this was what was going to
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get me to do all the painful training over that time but so just to make this clear that was my
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hyperbole but what i suggest to readers of the book is that this isn't a fitness book it's about
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creating your own hyperbole to create something exciting some crazy big goal with the idea that
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even if you fail to achieve it you're still way ahead it's this great motivational technique so
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you know imagine giving a speech in a foreign language instead of just learning the language
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you know going someplace and delivering this scary talk or learning to play the guitar and then busking
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you know performing on the streets of manhattan or learning to cook and not just cooking a decent
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meal but serving haute cuisine to a whole bunch of snobs you know to raise money for a good cause
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or something those are all hyperbole and my book actually offers kind of a technique to come up with
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your own i love that idea of creating a moonshot for yourself because it can be inspiring and you
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might reach it that you reach it great but i think the benefit is it'll get you to do those things
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that are good for you like that along the way you'll be better for even just attempting that
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big moonshot hyperbole goal exactly yeah i think that's a cool tactic we're gonna take a quick break
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for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show so let's talk about another way you used
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aristotle's ideas of rhetoric on yourself i think we talked about this last time in your last uh our last
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conversation about rhetoric it's the three means of persuasion uh we got ethos pathos and logos let's
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talk about ethos first because aristotle thought that was the most powerful most important one recap
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what is ethos and then talk about how did you use that means of persuasion on yourself so aristotle's
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ethos is your projected character it's what people think of you or it's your brand it's whether
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your audience likes and trusts you and this is why aristotle thought was most powerful because
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you know if if you like and totally trust somebody you're really likely to basically do what they say
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you know that's the your leader so now the ideal ethos aristotle says three characteristics and of
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course he said them in greek but i translated them from the greek and simplified them as what i call
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craft caring and cause so first comes craft you want your audience to think you know what you're
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doing you have the knowledge and the experience to solve whatever problem there is at hand that's
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craft the caring part of it means your audience thinks you have only their best interest at heart
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you're selfless you're totally not selfish it's all about them then there's cause which has to do with
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values with your audience believing you share those same values and that you live up to them you're a
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good person right you have a good soul now when it comes to how i persuaded myself that audience as
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we talked about earlier is my very own aristotelian soul and my job was to convince that soul that i have
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an ethos that's worthy of it that i have the craft that i i knew how to get in shape and knew how to
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develop the habits that i was selfless about it like this wasn't about what i wanted from day to
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day i i wanted to you know read books with a cat in my lap that's what i really you know wanted but my
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need was deeper i wanted to be able to run my age and then came the cause part you know what i deeply
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valued and that's what connected me most closely with my soul and that was the biggest secret of all
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this idea that i was projecting a worthy ethos to my soul that allowed me not just to create these
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habits and believe in them that they could actually work but to stick to them from day to day yeah one
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of the tools you use to do that is decorum correct yeah so decorum is how you make your audience
00:27:31.980
think you're one of them and you know i actually several days a week during the school year i talk
00:27:38.920
to um high school and college class and law school classes and i talk to students whose classes have
00:27:45.840
adopted my books now the problem i have is that my children are like older than these teachers now
00:27:52.520
and and so how do i make people believe i'm one of them and you know so there are certain
00:27:58.360
techniques you can do one is to understand their language not necessarily use every word of it but
00:28:04.940
the most important thing i tell people is say before you talk to any kind of audience i'm going to love
00:28:11.000
these people and projecting love believe it or not you know which honors your audience and makes you
00:28:17.940
thrilled to be with them makes you appear thrilled to be with them actually works so now how do you do that
00:28:24.320
with your own soul i decided that the most important thing was to try to love my soul as much as i could
00:28:32.640
and i know this is getting a little squirrely here but really what it comes down to is another
00:28:37.520
tool of rhetoric that aristide describes in many of his books which is this idea of phylos and phylos
00:28:46.180
is this idea of ultimate friendship of being willing to do whatever it takes for the other person
00:28:52.860
and you know that's partly what caring is but it's also about what decorum is so decorum is this idea
00:28:58.500
that you're one of them you're very close to them and you'll do anything for them so if you think of
00:29:04.380
your soul as like your very best friend and you'll do anything for it and you know at the same time
00:29:10.120
your soul will back you up at any time and forgive you for these temporary lapses which are inevitable
00:29:15.320
then that's decorum that's you know acting as if you're part of the tribe with you and your soul
00:29:22.080
the only members and it sounds like one thing that you might need to do if your day-to-day self isn't
00:29:29.260
there to where your soul self is at yet is fake it like if you want to be healthy think of yourself
00:29:35.360
as an athlete but you're not there right now just do athlete things and then your soul be like oh hey
00:29:41.440
this guy this guy's trying like he's trying to be me here and i'm gonna like this guy oh yeah so
00:29:47.360
weightlifters describe this phenomenon it's a joke but they call it invisible lat syndrome
00:29:53.340
so your your back muscles from a whole lot of pull-ups get a little bit bigger so you walk
00:30:00.300
around as if they're 10 times the size they are you know with your arms out as if you're a well-armed
00:30:05.220
policeman or something so walking around like that actually can convince you and one of the things
00:30:11.100
that i found myself doing this is you know faking until you make it but it's also a kind of decorous
00:30:16.380
act it's pretending i'm so close to my soul i'm already there and that was i i would when i still
00:30:24.460
found it a little bit difficult walking after this procedure this doctor gave me which was weeks long
00:30:31.340
and involved a lot of very painful shots to flood the zone of my nervous system so that my gluteal muscles
00:30:37.980
will stop contracting i still was walking with kind of a limp so i turned it into a sort of swagger
00:30:43.580
so i walked around as if i was like this really cool athlete instead of this old guy with a limp
00:30:50.520
and eventually as i overcame the limp itself in the meantime my brain had changed and i really kind
00:30:57.320
of believed that i was capable of being more of an athlete than i was in reality so that's faking until
00:31:03.200
you make it but it's also getting close to my soul like what my soul really wanted to think of myself
00:31:09.560
as you know i think did this earnest hemingway so i'm watching that ken burns documentary on hemingway
00:31:15.580
and one thing i'm watching about right now is how hemingway there's like this myth around hemingway
00:31:22.060
but he created that myth like he had this idea of like ideal hemingway and then i think he tried to do
00:31:28.600
the things that ideal hemingway would do and i think it got him into trouble but i think that's
00:31:34.140
what he was doing he had this ideal of himself his best self and he tried to do those things whether
00:31:38.280
that was hunting in africa you know boxing just doing all those manly urs hemingway things that is
00:31:45.100
such a great example and so in rhetoric there's this term called octio which is latin for acting and
00:31:54.140
it means acting in both senses of the word it means playing pretend like you're acting a part
00:31:59.980
but also means action so to project a certain character before you take an action allows yourself
00:32:07.740
to sort of play a role that then you try to take on in real life and hemingway is a brilliant example
00:32:13.600
of that okay so we talked about ethos let's talk about the next means of persuasion which is pathos
00:32:19.100
what is pathos and then how did you use it on yourself so pathos has to do with emotion and
00:32:25.680
in rhetoric it has to do with your ability to change your audience's mood so there are lots of
00:32:31.780
tools doing that and one that worked really well for me so but by the way to change my mood from
00:32:37.860
you know depressed loser to like aspiring athlete and optimist one of the things that i i found that
00:32:46.680
really worked was self-deprecating humor and instead of telling myself what a loser i was every time i
00:32:53.360
failed at something or made a mistake i learned to laugh at those mistakes and and sort of force myself
00:32:59.480
to do it until i i did it naturally and i actually this is still working for me the other day i was asked
00:33:06.980
to do a favor for a friend i i live on 150 acres and i cut a lot of my own firewood so i'm pretty good
00:33:13.980
with a chainsaw and so this guy asked me if i would cut down a cherry tree it is condo development
00:33:19.720
so cherry trees are awful to cut down they lean in all directions and you never know which way the
00:33:26.200
damn thing's gonna fall and here it is this tree fell the wrong way it would crash through a stranger's
00:33:32.360
glass door on the ground floor so and of course i'm cutting this thing i i made a big mistake in
00:33:40.420
the angle i was cutting and my chainsaw got stuck and i'd forgotten to bring my axe and you know the
00:33:46.600
other tools you need like wedges to get your chainsaw unstuck anyway so the chainsaw is simply
00:33:52.660
stuck i i lived 40 minutes away i didn't have time to go back and get the other tools so i drove home
00:33:59.700
leaving the chainsaw embarrassingly in the tree so this everybody in this condo development could see
00:34:05.340
some idiot had left a chainsaw in a tree that was partly cut that night it got windy and the tree
00:34:14.820
fell missing this glass door by like two inches i mean it was right there with the chainsaw still
00:34:22.900
you know sticking out of it in the worst possible way so everybody could see it i came back the next
00:34:28.800
day you know with my axe my wedges and got the chainsaw out and cut the tree up and everything was
00:34:34.280
fine now before i started practicing rhetoric on myself i would have said you can never face these
00:34:41.940
people again just leave the chainsaw there and buy a new one and instead i thought this is just a sort
00:34:47.980
of idiotic thing you do jay and the great thing is you always fix it so i laughed i went back and fixed
00:34:55.420
it and i kind of felt better for it and nobody in the condo they were very kind people they watched
00:35:01.400
me as i cut up the tree and nobody was laughing at me god bless them all another example of a famous
00:35:08.000
person who i maybe they were using pathos on themselves they just didn't know it fdr franklin
00:35:14.320
roosevelt so we all know he had polio he couldn't walk he's in a wheelchair and i remember reading
00:35:20.400
a biography about him and you know when he was in his braces he would often fall down especially on like
00:35:26.300
slick marble floor because the metal would just scrape and he would just fall down and instead
00:35:30.720
of engaging in self-pity and just like oh i'm such an idiot oh i'm so like he just acted like it wasn't
00:35:36.540
a big deal and he kind of kept that smile on his face and he'd say hey can someone help me up here
00:35:42.900
like people knew that he couldn't walk but he just had that big grin and just exuded levity and
00:35:49.400
confidence yeah and so you know it's interesting you see the same thing in toddlers where you know
00:35:56.580
a two-year-old falls down which happens often and you know scrapes her knee or whatever and you always
00:36:04.340
see this moment where the toddler looks around at the adults especially you know the parent and sees
00:36:11.380
their reaction first and if the parent looks horrified or rushes oh my gosh my baby is hurt
00:36:17.280
the kid will cry and when i'm not sure this shows good parenting on my part but when my
00:36:25.440
two children were toddlers when they fell down and there'd be that moment a kind of chirotic moment when
00:36:31.420
you think about it like what's what's the action to take here i would quick look at the concrete or
00:36:38.900
the floor or the ground whatever and i check and see if it was okay which would make the kid angry
00:36:46.520
more often than not but much less rarely cry their mother would come rushing to them and they would
00:36:53.240
always cry and you know there's something about doing that to yourself where are you going to be
00:36:59.280
the one who sort of jokingly checks the floor or are you going to be the one who immediately thinks
00:37:06.180
this is awful and that's a way to change your mood now there's another tool i have to talk about which
00:37:12.240
is actually more effective which is repeating the same things over and over again to have an expression
00:37:17.980
when you're in a bad mood that improves your mood and this is where those cheesy affirmations you
00:37:24.300
know the stuff they used to sell like eight track tapes for to play in your car like stewart smallie
00:37:29.020
i'm good enough i'm smart enough and gosh darn it people like me yeah and you know what i mean
00:37:33.960
there are ways to do that and i'm hoping we can talk about a way to use a particular rhythm to do
00:37:39.820
that which rhetoricians invented many many years ago but the big thing is repeating them and there's
00:37:46.460
something that neurobiologists and neurologists have discovered which is there's a part of your brain
00:37:52.300
let's see if i remember the term that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that's a part of your brain
00:37:59.360
that actually controls our view of reality and it also is very responsive to repetition
00:38:06.520
so if you repeat things often enough or if you see things often enough on social media even if they're
00:38:12.380
untrue you start to believe them it becomes your reality and it's that part of your brain the
00:38:19.200
ventromedial prefrontal cortex that actually starts changing the world for you and actually repeating
00:38:26.820
these stupid affirmations to yourself stops making them seem stupid if you repeat them often enough
00:38:32.720
and it becomes your idea of reality and you can do it in very specific ways that actually change the way
00:38:39.580
you see things happening around you and see the way you're actually behaving now so beyond that and
00:38:47.200
what we call affirmations today in the old days they called charms which were expressions that actually
00:38:53.580
made magic happen and so to this day you can find people dig up all the time these lead in objects
00:39:01.460
with expressions written on them that would cure people or curse people whatever these were charms but
00:39:08.720
they were really repeated things you were supposed to say them over and over again and so that's how
00:39:14.180
you made magic happen you repeated things often enough that would change reality and rhetoric does the
00:39:19.240
same thing by changing your brain now there's another factor here in terms of pathos and that is you can
00:39:27.000
actually make yourself into a kind of charm and aristotle wrote about this the perfect ethos actually has
00:39:34.120
a magical effect on an audience which is charisma and the word charisma comes from the greek word for charm
00:39:43.900
so a charming person originally meant someone who had sort of a magical effect on people and you see
00:39:50.760
that with some hollywood actors or you know when politicians like jfk or martin luther king they were
00:39:57.900
seen often enough and a perfect kind of character at least according to their followers enough that
00:40:05.820
people change the way they saw them and saw reality as a result that's that's what those are the most
00:40:11.520
powerful tools of pathos have to do with charms and repetition so you mentioned there's a specific
00:40:17.060
way you can formulate those mantras or charms that make them more effective what is that way well
00:40:23.480
there's something called the paen a p-a-e-n which originally was a god that would protect soldiers from
00:40:31.800
harm in ancient times so when they would run in a battle they would pray to the goddess paen so that
00:40:39.380
became they realized that if you do this with a certain rhythm and actually marcus tellia cicero this
00:40:47.240
ancient orator and one of the great rhetoricians wrote about this if you repeat it with a series of
00:40:54.060
short and long syllables that becomes that much more effective it's more convincing there's something in
00:41:01.500
the brain that's not fully understood yet i think someday it will be that um allows you to do this
00:41:07.940
so in homer he used pns a lot like golden haired far shooter son of zeus and you repeat that often
00:41:16.380
enough you really believe that this was a real character now you can see that in basketball games
00:41:22.860
in the ivy league people will be chanting repel them repel them make them relinquish the ball which
00:41:28.760
is silly but on the other hand it has this particular rhythm that actually works so these charms that people
00:41:35.400
dig up actually had these same rhythms on it these pian rhythms so i use them myself and i repeat them
00:41:42.600
over and over again and these rhythms become memorable and so my own posture tends to be terrible so i tell
00:41:50.080
myself all the time head on a swivel not in my lap as short and long rhythms with this you know
00:41:56.660
kind of convincing way when i was running up this mountain this mount musalak in new hampshire
00:42:02.160
to try to run my age in training for that i repeat things to myself like my legs love rocks i flow up
00:42:08.860
rocks and stupid as that was my brain changed to the point where my legs were loving rocks which are
00:42:17.700
the most horrible thing in the world i mean these were boulders i was running up and i actually was
00:42:22.620
convincing myself that i wasn't kind of hopping in a weird unrhythmic way i was flowing up those rocks
00:42:29.420
that's where the pn comes in all right so come up with your own charm by using a pn
00:42:33.600
and so it's probably like a long sentence in the short sentence that's like the rhythm you want
00:42:37.760
or a long and short phrase and syllables it's short syllables and long syllables you don't have to be too
00:42:43.980
precise about it but you know marketers have used this all the time i mean the new york times came up
00:42:51.860
with the first great pn logos all the news that's fit to print that long and short syllables that
00:42:58.540
convinced people that this was the newspaper of record and lays potato chips but you can't eat
00:43:04.100
just one the quicker picker upper for bonty towels i could go on no okay i love it convinced people it
00:43:11.180
made billions for marketers and companies yeah so find one for yourself and repeat it to yourself even
00:43:16.740
though it might seem silly it can work yeah and part of this is talking about mood do it ironically
00:43:23.620
in the beginning like like smile while you do it because it's going to be stupid and then repeat it
00:43:28.780
often enough that it's not stupid i mean another thing about irony we're talking about irony is another
00:43:33.080
trope whenever i completed these horrible work as i had to do i was working out four to six hours a day
00:43:39.220
in order to get myself into condition where i could run my edge up this mountain my wife bless her would
00:43:46.020
always ask me how it went and instead of saying it sucked what do you think i would say refreshing
00:43:52.080
you know ironically and you know after a while i never truly believed my workouts i still don't
00:43:58.820
are refreshing part of me kind of thought they're not so bad like like you know they actually make me
00:44:05.360
feel better in the long run okay so we talked about pathos let's talk about logos that's logic
00:44:10.060
so what is aristotelian logos because it's not it's not how we think it is i think typically we
00:44:16.320
think of logos it's got to be these iron clad arguments no fallacies aristotle didn't think
00:44:22.540
that when it comes to logos no not when it comes to rhetorical logos which isn't pure logic in fact it
00:44:30.180
can be the opposite you know fallacies can actually convince people but you know even his formal logic
00:44:35.940
has confused people for centuries oh man there's a period i went through aristotle's like works you
00:44:41.060
know nick and mckin ethics is great uh metaphysics interesting and then i get to his book about
00:44:46.220
syllogisms i'm like oh just started snoring this was not not fun god topics even worse yeah you know
00:44:53.080
and even sherlock holmes gets it wrong gets aristotelian logic wrong he talks all the time about using
00:44:59.720
deduction to solve crimes when he's actually using induction which is a kind of logic that gathers facts
00:45:05.120
and uses them to make a conclusion and actually i talk about formal logic that way because actually
00:45:10.760
aristotelian logic can let us deal with this fire hose of information and fake news that comes to us
00:45:18.560
through our devices aristotle taught us how to interpret facts and determine their value and reach
00:45:24.040
conclusions without getting all emotional about it and that can actually help in terms of you know
00:45:29.240
improving your mood and not think that everything in the world is going entirely wrong
00:45:33.740
but using ill logic to convince yourself to do you know the habits if your soul tells you you need
00:45:42.860
to do can work even better so some fallacies i found were great on me one of the best was the
00:45:50.500
fallacy of antecedent which has to do with you know if something has always been done this way it
00:45:56.160
always will be or if something went well it always will be or if something has always gone wrong it always
00:46:01.700
will so i happen to be an absolute master i know i don't mean to brag but nobody's better at least in
00:46:09.420
my household of two people at loading the dishwasher i am brilliant at it my wife is terrible i swear she
00:46:16.460
stands back and throws dishes into the thing it's hurt our marriage slightly but now i'm the dishwasher
00:46:22.660
loader and she's allowed me to do it but here's the thing this leads to a second fallacy which is the
00:46:27.640
false analogy so i'm good at loading the dishwasher therefore i'm brilliant at organization and problem
00:46:34.440
solving because i can load the dishwasher i could probably run a corporation right same thing so it's
00:46:41.040
the fallacy but that same kind of combination of things i'm really good at this one thing now think
00:46:47.480
of an analogy however far away from that that lets you overcome imposter syndrome or convince yourself
00:46:54.040
you're qualified to apply for a job that might otherwise seem above your station so this these
00:46:59.500
fallacies can really work again if you repeat them often enough that you actually believe in them okay
00:47:05.300
so with logos we're going to use logical fallacies for a positive end and convincing ourselves that we
00:47:10.800
can do something that our moonshot goal that we have exactly and so that's the thing that moonshot goal
00:47:16.720
if you do it if you set it up right it's impossible so it's fallacious logic or illogic
00:47:23.180
that convinces you that you can even do it because you know if it is literally impossible you won't be
00:47:29.640
able to do it yeah but to to believe that's impossible and then to believe you can do it
00:47:35.160
that's the greatest kind of fallacy so we've talked about some of the rhetorical tools in your book
00:47:40.780
there's a lot more but i'm curious how did your experiment go and using rhetoric and self-persuasion
00:47:45.800
in overcoming this snapping hip syndrome you had well so i decided i would make the actual attempt
00:47:52.880
on one day my 58th birthday august 27th that's kairos that's kairos very good that was my one
00:48:00.320
opportunity i was going to do it or i was going to fail and i deliberately to test the tool this whole
00:48:05.340
experiment was to test the tools to see if they would work what would work what didn't and i thought
00:48:10.860
putting as much pressure on myself as possible would be one way to test the tools and so one day
00:48:16.200
my birthday besides when i turned 58 that gave me an additional minute to run my age which meant you
00:48:23.720
know running it in less than 58 minutes so i'd have another minute and for every minute less than 58
00:48:30.060
that it took me to make it to the summit i would declare myself that much younger in years which
00:48:35.160
when you think about it makes as much sense as declaring your age in terms of number of years
00:48:39.280
so to prepare for that day i had spent nine months in training four to six hours a day after this
00:48:46.120
horrible procedure with this orthopedist who injected me with these hundreds of shots of dextrose sugar
00:48:51.720
water to flood my nerves with pain so i did everything i could with all these things of rhetoric and then on
00:48:58.900
that one day at six o'clock in the morning i was at the trailhead of this mountain 3.7 miles 2800 feet
00:49:08.180
of elevation up these very slick rocks with a river running in waterfalls down beside it very difficult
00:49:16.220
kind of run and the conditions were bad it was way too warm and humid and you know the older you get
00:49:23.340
the harder it is for your body to deal with heat and to allow yourself to oxygenate so and the whole
00:49:30.960
way up i didn't look at my watch the entire time when i got to the summit and i hit the button on my
00:49:36.440
watch i didn't even look then i just realized it didn't matter so much what my time was whether i'd
00:49:43.940
gotten younger by running my age or not i discovered and this is absolutely true i know this sounds self-help
00:49:50.300
but it's true i was happier than i'd been in years and that effect has lasted ever since and this is
00:49:57.360
years later it's taken me a long time to do the research to complete this book but the rhetoric
00:50:02.240
itself had worked and when i looked at my watch i then discovered well i won't tell you it's going
00:50:08.520
to be a mystery you have to read the book this is awesome so it sounds like you can use aristotle's
00:50:13.040
rhetoric to persuade yourself so we encourage people to go check out your book so where can people go to
00:50:17.000
learn more about the book in your work well i have a substack newsletter if you look up my name
00:50:21.160
you'll find it it tells all about the tools of rhetoric and self-persuasion but i also have a
00:50:25.620
website called argue lab all one word argue lab.com fantastic well j heinrichs next time it's been a
00:50:31.340
pleasure brett this is a real pleasure thank you my guest it was j heinrichs he's the author of the
00:50:37.340
book aristotle's guide to self-persuasion it's available on amazon.com the bookstores everywhere
00:50:41.140
you can find more information about his work at his website j heinrichs.com also check out
00:50:45.320
our show notes at aom.is slash self-persuasion where you find links to resources we delve deeper
00:50:49.560
into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our
00:51:01.320
website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles
00:51:05.320
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00:51:08.820
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00:51:20.160
until next time this is brett mckay remind you to listen to the aom podcast but put what you've heard