How to become impossible to ignore?

Learn how to maximise your chance of success each time you interact with another person. Grab the attention of the people you want, and get them to do what you want. Like a surgeon!

If a patient complies with medical recommendations, it can greatly increase their health outcomes. Doctors are trained to communicate with patients prioritising empathy, compassion, cultural sensitivity, privacy and confidentiality.

Undeniably, those are important principles that make many patients feel good; those communication tactics are invaluable in private healthcare, where patient retention can become the top priority.

If you, however, want to maximise patient’s health outcomes, you might need to put your priorities elsewhere. Available research clearly and consistently shows that patients fail to retain virtually all information provided by doctors during consultations.

According to McKinstry one of the most important factors affecting patients’ retention rate is the complexity of information, and patient characteristics (such as education and memory capacity).

Therefore simplicity appears to be the key to information retention, and patients taking recommended actions.

If you have been reading my posts, you have now learned about how our brains work, what are the most common thinking distortions, how the default thinking modes work, the trap of emotional reasoning, how gut feelings typically lead to bad decisions, and how social media algorithms hijack your attention, making you miserable in the end.

Now the time has come to teach you how to operationalise that knowledge and put it to good use. Get the right type of attention from the people you want. Learn to attract connections of mutual value, and get people to respond to you in a meaningful way.

What makes people hard to ignore?

The assumption and anticipation of low energy investment.

Some people are hard to ignore. My daughter is irresistibly kind, while my oldest son is direct and loud. Both are hard to ignore. Their natural traits may appeal to some individuals, and may be repulsive or forgettable to others.

Why? Because certain traits may be easy or simple for some people to accept.

Some might prefer a kind person, being captivated by their helpfulness and feeling good in their presence, while others may see kindness as a sign of naivety or a weakness. Being direct can score you some points with those who value those traits, but may be seen as insensitive or rude to others.

Here is the thing: you don’t need to be kind nor direct. You don’t need to change your personality or preferences. There is nothing wrong with you!

There are established and effective techniques that you can use to catch the attention of the people you want. Surgeons have practised this for centuries: It may be impossible to know what your patients’ preferences and thoughts are, but you need to get them to do what you want them to do, to obtain the best health outcomes for those under your care. How do you do it?