AntiManipulation: Exposing the tools, tricks, and techniques THEY use to manipulate YOU into buying THEIR stuff.

By Keith Blakemore-Noble

When you buy something, are you buying because YOU want to buy? Or are you buying because THEY want you to buy?

How would you even know the difference?

In AntiManipulation, Keith Blakemore-Noble helps to give you the upper hand by showing just how the unscrupulous attempt to manipulate us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Be Your Change
• Release date: Mar 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9780993162572

Keith Blakemore-Noble

Keith Blakemore-Noble, aka The Mindset Master, is a coach, international speaker, best-selling author, hypnotist, trainer, podcaster and occasional magician.He helps people to transform their deepest fears into their greatest strengths. Since 2010 he has helped over 5,000 people across the planet to transform their lives, which is why he has been called the world's #1 fear strategist.From paralysing shyness to teaching on stages in the UK, USA, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, Keith has come far from a life that is a distant memory. He has been described as someone who brings a natural humour and wit to the stage, and a captivating presence, allowing you to learn from him with ease as he shares the same tools he used to make massive transformations in his own life and those of his clients.Using his own experiences as a driver, he has carefully developed and refined a bespoke blend of hypnosis, NLP and coaching to form Mindset Mastery; something he continues to enhance as brain and behavioural sciences evolve.A living embodiment of the cutting-edge sciences and tools he employs, Keith uses them all on himself first, so knows how well they work and understands how the processes feel from your perspective.Prior to moving full-time into helping people, he spent the best part of two decades in IT, including leading a team with members in the UK, Norway and New Zealand. He has gone from reprogramming and upgrading computers to reprogramming and upgrading people's minds. The latter is infinitely more rewarding, it must be said.An accomplished international speaker, Keith has spoken for a wide variety of organisations including the BBC, Rotary International and BNI, on topics around mastering our own mindset.As well as being the author of this book, he is the mastermind behind the four-volume (so far) international best-selling Winning in Life and Work series of books, and The Masks We Wear, which takes a look at the metaphorical masks we all wear in life, examines where they come from, looks at why they are harmful and reveals how we can start to remove them and live a life free from masks.A strong believer that change is always possible, he invites you to change your mind and thus your life.One of Keith's primary values is fairness. This is where the strong drive to create AntiManipulation came from. It's also why he is increasingly passionate about it - not just the book, but the concepts behind the book and creating awareness of these practices (via the book, his blogs, media appearances and live talks).

Book preview

One

Could YOU Be Manipulated?

On a scale of 0–10, with 0 being not at all and 10 being ridiculously so, how easily do you think you could be manipulated into buying something you don’t need?

Take a moment to think about it and see what number you come up with.

It’s an interesting question, isn’t it?

While researching for this book, I asked the same question across multiple social media platforms to see what people thought.

The vast majority scored themselves in the 0–2 range. They were often adamant that if they didn’t need something, then nobody could make them buy it. They also tended to very strongly express the view that a hard sell would never work on them, and that any attempts to sell them something they didn’t need would be met with immediate refusal.

Unfortunately, the evidence from the real world is that most people massively overestimate their ability to resist!

While people generally score themselves in the 0–2 range, the majority of the public are actually more likely to be in the 8–10 range.

So, why the disparity between how we perceive ourselves and reality?

Need versus Want

The reality is that we don’t actually buy things because we need them; we buy things because we want them.

Of course, we may attempt to justify our decisions by looking for proof that we need a certain item. However, in the end, the decision to buy is born out of want.

We buy because we want the thing or, more accurately, we want the feeling that we think the thing will bring.

Emotion drives our buying decisions, not logic. It is want, not need; it is desire, not require.

So, when we think about whether someone could persuade or manipulate us into buying something we don’t need, we think about it logically and we conclude we would not buy something if we didn't need it.

Completely forgetting that when we are in the midst of buying, we are being driven by want (emotion) rather than need (logic).

During my survey, a small number of people did mention that they could not be manipulated to buy something they didn’t need, but if it was something they wanted then they might be much easier prey. This is an important distinction, and one we will return to in a moment.

Manipulation

Manipulation is a very emotive word. It has a lot of baggage and carries many connotations.

For many, there is a belief that manipulation only affects the weak-willed. That the stronger-willed and the more intelligent cannot be manipulated because they are too strong and too clever to fall for it. Very few people consider themselves to be weak enough or foolish enough to be manipulated, so they believe it can’t happen to them.

This in turn creates a false sense of security, which causes us to lower our guard. After all, why be on the lookout for something which isn’t going to affect us?

Why is This a Problem?

We believe we can’t be manipulated, because that only happens to weak-willed individuals.

We believe we only buy what we know we need. So, we believe that nobody can persuade us to buy something we don’t need.

The problem is that all of us can be, and often are, manipulated!

You see, the unscrupulous know we are not going to buy something we don’t think we need, so they don’t try to sell us what we don’t need.

Instead, they are very skilled at gradually building within us a desire, which becomes a want, for what they just happen to be selling.

Once they have built up that want, they help us to feel good about buying. They give us a way to rationalise a need for it. Now we are buying something to fulfil a want and a need. How can we fight such a powerful combination? How could we ever doubt that we must buy it? After all, we want it and we need it!

So many of us fall for it because the unscrupulous are very skilled at this form of manipulation. They use multiple layers of it and identify their targets carefully. We fall for it because we are not even looking to guard ourselves against it, because we don’t believe it can happen.

That is until it’s too late and days later we are thinking Why did I ever buy that?

AntiManipulation

So, what would happen if we were more aware of the possibility that we could be manipulated? What would happen if we were much better informed about the various tricks, tools and techniques used by the unscrupulous?

That’s the premise behind AntiManipulation, the book you currently hold in your hand (physically or virtually).

Two

What Have You Got Against Selling?

AntiManipulation is all about exposing the tools, tricks and techniques the unscrupulous use to manipulate us into buying their stuff.

The reason for creating this book is to raise awareness of these approaches, so you can start to spot them when you encounter them. This means you can protect yourself against them, which, in turn, enables you to make more informed decisions.

So that when you do buy, you are buying because you want to and not because they want you