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If you want to influence someone, you may want to take a trick from horse trainers, who use ""the carrot, and the stick."

The horse moves towards the carrot, what it desires, and away from the stick, what it fears. People are motivated in much the same way. We both search for what we desire, and try and avoid what we fear.

Some people are motivated more by the carrot, and others more by the stick, but there's a lot of both in all of us.

If you've been versed in NLP, you might have heard this described as towards or away from motivation.

We move towards pleasure, and away from pain. This is also true in a much broader sense.

A person will either go with the majority, or they will take a stand against it. NLP describes these as 'meta programs' " but you need to realize that they are not set in stone.

A person can move towards pleasure in one environment, and away from pain in another " most of the time we are all actually running a combination of the two.

Realize that people's unconscious motivations are often really this simple " towards pleasure or away from pain " and you'll be able to easily motivate others. Sometimes people are too stuck in one meta program, and this can cause problems.

Perhaps you know someone who spends his or her whole life running from pain, but never really moves towards pleasure. In this situation you'll need to ramp up the images of pleasure and deplete those of pain to help them live a more fulfilling life.

You can do this by using vivid mental imaginary to stimulate both the imagination and the emotions. Use sensory language that describes what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we touch, what we smell, and what we feel. By connecting with the senses, you'll connect with the imagination. By connecting with the imagination, you'll connect with the emotions.

Simply giving a logical list of the benefits of one course of action and the costs of another may work well in the board room, but in real life it will only create a "bored" room! If you want people on the edge of their seats, you have to cater your conversation towards the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is not a creature of logic, it's driven by emotion and imagination. As well as using sensory description described above, phrase your statements in a way that people can easily relate to. Use references to everyday life, and everyday frustrations and joys. The excitement of your first pay day contrasted with the frustration of having bills piled up is a great towards: away from structure to help motivate someone to find a job, for example.