Powerful Writing is The Perfect Way To Facilitate Change

It's about presenting threatening ideas in a non-threatening environment

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

If you’ve ever tried to change someone’s mind or influence their way of thinking in the heat of a debate, in real life or online, you may doubt that words are enough to facilitate change.

People don’t like changing their minds, even if you provide compelling evidence that what they believe isn’t 100% accurate.

Presenting new ideas is hard. Often when you use words to argue back and forth, people tend to dig in and become even more entrenched in their beliefs. Things can get nasty, and personal.

That’s exactly why books and long form articles are a good way to get people thinking differently. They can present new ideas in a balanced and well-considered way. Perhaps most importantly, they can present them in a calm, non-threatening environment.

Author James Clear makes a great point about this:

Any idea that is sufficiently different from your current worldview will feel threatening. And the best place to ponder a threatening idea is in a non-threatening environment. As a result, books are often a better vehicle for transforming beliefs than conversations or debates.

A book will give you the time and space to mull things over. Hands up if you’ve ever finished a book thinking something like: “That was so fascinating. I’d never really thought about things from that perspective before.” (Waves hand in the air.)

Now think about how often that happens during a raging internet debate.

So if you’re writing a book (or even if you’re sitting down to write a long-form article or personal essay) consider your message in those terms: I have a non-threatening environment to work with here. How can I best present potentially threatening ideas, so that readers can maybe embrace a new perspective?

Want to write a world-changing book? Check out this book and this one.

Want to be a gateway that allows your readers to think about things differently and be inspired by new ideas, check out this one (my current read).

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Some thoughts from others I’ve been enjoying this week

• Is it worth writing (your own words) online anymore? by

  Alex Mathers

• Does Writing In A Niche Help You As A Writer? Depends Where. by

  Linda Caroll

• The Gurus Said Not To Write “I” Stories - so I Did… by

  Veronica Llorca-Smith

What else I’ve been up to this week

Reading: Be The Gateway by

Dan Blank

(free on Kindle Unlimited)

Watching: Rings of Power (still) on Amazon Prime

Listening to: The Folklore Album (it has an autumnal feel)

This week’s Medium posts

(Friend links, as always, so you can read for free. And this week, they’re both about Substack)

• These Five Newsletters Bring In a Million Dollars or More Annually: What do they have that your newsletter doesn’t?

• What I Plan to Do to Grow My Substack in the Coming Month: 4 weeks, 4 steps, and hopefully 4x the growth.

That’s all for this week. If you’re reading this online and you’re not subscribed yet, feel free to subscribe to get future posts straight to your inbox.

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