Careful what you rehearse

A young man takes a job his family has doubts about. At the first dinner he explains why it was the right choice. At the second he explains it again, a little more smoothly. By the fifth he has a polished version: three good reasons, a story about the manager, an answer for every objection.

Somewhere along the way, he stopped explaining and started believing.

This is how persuasion works on the person doing it. We assume belief comes first and the words follow. Often it runs the other way. Make the case out loud, give it a shape, add an example or two, defend it against a sceptical uncle, and the case hardens into conviction. The speaker is the first audience, and the most reliable one.

Sellers know this without naming it. The man who tells customers all day that his product is as good as the imported one will, within a year, be certain of it. He may even be right. But he did not get there by checking.

There is a useful side to this. Say the brave thing often enough and you begin to act like someone who means it. Rehearse the generous reading of a difficult customer, and you become more generous.

The risk is the same mechanism pointed the other way. Argue that the slow month was bad luck, and soon it was bad luck. Argue that people do not notice the details, and soon you will not see the details either. Argue that a rival only wins on price, and you will stop looking at what else they do.

So it is worth choosing one's arguments with care, especially the ones made in private. They are not only descriptions of what we think. They are instructions for what we are about to think.