Michael V. Pantalon, Ph.D.

Since people respond much better when they act for their own reasons rather than yours, we need to help them discover their reasons as soon as possible.

The depths of our influence can be mysterious indeed. Whether you use Instant Influence at home, at work, or out in the world; whether you use it with your colleagues, your employees, your loved ones, or yourself, there’s one thing I guarantee: if you trust this process and allow it to run its course, you will be amazed where it takes you.

The Instant Influence process is an effective way to help people discover their own reasons for doing something—the most powerful motivators of all.

So what works? Here’s the secret to Instant Influence: people take action when they hear themselves say *why* they want to. People can tell you all day long that they wish they could do something. But when they tell you why they want to do it, that’s when things start to happen. That’s Instant Influence in a nutshell. Get someone to tell you why he wants to act, and action is almost sure to follow.

One of the most interesting fields of psychological research concerns intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: the study of people doing something for a reward. The results are overwhelming: Intrinsic motivation is far more powerful. In fact, occasionally when you start rewarding behavior that people are already doing, they start doing it less.

People usually act for their own reasons, not someone else’s. If they do change a behavior because of something someone else has said, most of the time that change won’t stick. The secret of Instant Influence is that it helps people discover their own reasons for doing something, even something they thought they didn’t want to do.