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By the way, this is an example of embrace-and-amplify persuasion, in which you take the teen’s side more completely than they take it themselves. They want to maximize their today selves, usually in some fleeting and selfish way, whereas you are maximizing their entire lives.

The key to making this reframe work is to remove all emotion from it. Keep insisting the teen’s future self will be happy you acted the way you are and agree with the teen when they say they “don’t understand” why you are being the way you are. Tell them that’s exactly your point—that they don’t yet have the capacity to understand their long-term best interests, but their future self will. And you answer to their future self—the complete person—not the half-done version.

Full disclosure, this might be the weakest reframe in the book, but it might work better than whatever-the-heck you were doing. Don’t expect any conversation with teens to end in hugs and gratitude. Teens are still teens. But you might be able to use the reframe to detach your emotions from the situation, and that can keep a lid on how heated things get.

Oh, and you probably shouldn’t use the term “half-baked noodle” when talking to a teen. Throw in some adult words such as maturity, fully developed, and even actuarial tables if you want to be a showoff. Read the room.

That said, if you’re only in it for your entertainment, wait for the inevitable teen complaint of “I don’t understand why . . .” and reply with “That’s exactly my point. If you could understand this situation in full, it would mean you were ready to make decisions without me. I love you. Do your homework and go to bed, you rascal.”

Who Has the Power

I often hear people talk about themselves as powerless pawns in a cruel world. They see power coming from the government, police, their bosses, and even their spouses. But power is a tricky thing, and we often see it backwards. Examples will help my point.

Is an elected politician in charge, or are the voters? You can imagine it both ways. It depends on the specifics, but voters are never powerless. Neither are politicians.

Is your boss in charge, or are you? It depends how hard it would be to replace you. A top engineer in a technical firm probably has more clout than a mid-level boss.

Now let’s say you meet someone for the first time and the encounter does not go well. Perhaps the new person is rude or disrespectful. Maybe they are refusing to be helpful in ways you’d expect any decent person to be. In these cases, are you being controlled by the stranger?

It feels as if your mood and the quality of your day will be altered by how this stranger treats you. That gives the stranger a lot of power over you. If you accept the frame that the other person’s actions and attitude will influence you, then they will. But you don’t have to accept that frame. You have a better option.

Usual Frame: People treat you poorly, and you can’t do much about it.

Reframe: You cause people to act the way they do.

I first discovered this reframe in college. I noticed a weird pattern I could not immediately explain. Whenever I was relaxed, people treated me better. When I was angry or stressed, others seemed to treat me poorly more often than I liked. For years, I believed I had been observing a false pattern that I only imagined. Surely there is no physical mechanism that could make other people nicer just because I was feeling relaxed. I couldn’t imagine how that would work.

Then I got smarter. Some call it experience.

Eventually, I realized that when I was relaxed and happy, I turned others into a version of me. They would smile more, engage more, and generally enjoy the encounter. Once I understood how compatible this view is with science, I reframed my subjective reality as one in which I influence everyone I meet, but they barely influence me.

Is that true? Not exactly. It would be more accurate to say we influence each other. But truth and logic do not matter for reframes. It only matters that you get what you want. And this reframe works fabulously for me because it reminds me to actively “change” the other person into what I need them to be. And what I usually need people to be is nice to me. That’s all. Nothing special. Just be respectful and kind. Most people want to be respectful, kind, and happy, so in my opinion, it’s ethical to persuade them to be more of that.

These days, I define myself as the author of my own experience regarding how others treat me, not a victim of their whims. In truth, I am both. But I frame it in a way that makes me feel the best.

You probably know the Bible story of David and Goliath, in which smallish David slays the “giant” Goliath using nothing but a sling and some stones. What they don’t normally tell you about the story is that shepherds were both accurate and lethal with slings, and they didn’t need to be within stabbing distance to kill. In other words, David was the powerful character in the story, not the underdog. The story generally gets told the other way around. Humans have a habit of confusing who has the power in any given situation.

We imagine our bosses—if we have bosses—hold power over us. And that is clearly true. But if you want a quick education in how much power a boss really has, try being one. You’ll instantly realize how hard it is to fire someone and hire someone better. Now pile on the legal protections afforded to employees in modern times. Then top that off with a frosting of so-called “wokeness” and see how much power the boss has. Now pack your schedule so you barely have time to apply any power to any specific situation. Now give that boss a spouse, two kids, a dog, and a cat.

If you go by the job descriptions alone, a boss has all the power. But in the real world, whenever someone is happily paying another for some sort of service, they are often closer to a tie in power. It might be 60-40 in favor of the boss, but 40 isn’t nothing.

We all have more power than we think. You can’t view your own power accurately because it’s nearly impossible to fully appreciate the impact you have on other people. Some examples will help make the point.

When the COVID pandemic broke out in 2020, the Trump administration put out the word to various smart people that the administration was open to ideas for Executive Orders—written commands a president signs to get things done outside the normal lawmaking process. I had some glancing knowledge of the telehealth business because of a recent startup experience, so I suggested an Executive Order allowing telehealth calls across state lines, which was until then not allowed. During a pandemic, this was an obvious rule to change. I reasoned that it would work well for the public and doctors alike and be hard to reverse. A few weeks later, President Trump signed the Executive Order—based on my suggestion that worked its way up through the channels—and a major impediment to reducing healthcare costs disappeared. So who had the “power” in that situation, the President of the United States or . . . me? I would argue that I had the power because the idea was so obviously a good one. And that’s my point: The person with the best ideas is always in charge. It might not seem like it. But they are.