How To Spread Your Ideas Like Wildfire - 6 Methods

If you want to spread the good word (your words) here are 6 methods that will boost the performance of a worthy idea.

1. Tell Stories.

Example: A Zen master has a high reputation in the community where he lives. He's falsely accused by a 16-year old girl who lives close by of fathering her child. The young girl tells her parents that the Zen master is in fact the father of her unborn child.

The parents of the child become very angry and quickly spread the news throughout the neighborhood. The parents pay the Zen master a visit and they say to him, "Our 16-year old daughter is pregnant and she told us that you are the father of her baby. That's awful. "

The Zen master listens and then he utters, "is that so?"
Parents: "yes, she told us that you are the father of her baby"
Zen master, "is that so?"

The news spreads fast and Immediately the Zen master loses his reputation in the community. No one comes to visit him anymore.
He's unfazed by this new reality. He's completely present and shows no resistance to what is happening.

The baby is born. The parents take the baby to the Zen master and say, "You look after the baby. We don't want it. It's your baby."

Zen master, "is that so?"

The parents give him the baby. The Zen master looks after the baby. He feeds, clothes, and cares for it.

A year later when the daughter becomes a bit more mature she confesses the truth to her parents and tells them that the Zen master is not the father. The real father is the young boy who works in the butcher shop next door.

The parents rush over to the Zen masters house and humbly apologize. "We are so sorry that we accused you of fathering our daughter's child. She's just told us that you are not the father of her child. We want the child back."

Zen master, "Is that so?"
The Zen master gently hands the baby to the parents.

The baby got a good head start while in the loving hands of the Zen master for the past year.

For anyone with just a smidgen of ego left the above scenario would have not occurred.
We believe we are our reputation. You know the old saying, "It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a second to lose it"...or something like that.

It's foreign to us that something good could arise from non-reaction.
What is true needs no defense. (read this one thrice)
This is a prototype of how to turn what could have been a disaster into something good.
Yes, all of the people rushed to see the Zen master once the matter had been corrected but either way he was unaffected.

Here's how the ego would have reacted:
How dare she accuse me of something I didn't do. That little spoiled brat. She's ruined everything that it took me a lifetime to build.
That little evil bitch and of course it would have some choice words for the parents as well.
Then the ego starts calling all of its family and friends on the phone repeating the same story over and over. The more the ego defends the deeper hole it digs.
What was a mole is now a mountain. We may even see the ego talking to an investigative reporter recounting the story.
The ego becomes a victim.
The ego becomes angry so much so that it may decide to take the entire family out including the baby.
Anger's real intent is to make another feel guilty. "Look at what you've done to me"

2. Use Hyperbole. Use outrageous examples, exaggerations, or shocking truths to get people's attention.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones is used to say that people who have faults should not criticize other people for having the same faults.

Remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye warns us against hypocrisy, seeing the flaw in another while ignoring the obvious flaws in our own lives.

3. Craft memorable sayings.

I am never upset for the reason I think.
An idea never leaves its source.
Laughter is the sound a glorious soul walking up.
The past is the already gone and the future is the not yet.
Love what Is
What I do for you, I do for me.
Do unto to others as you'd like for them to do unto you.

4. Asked Questions. Use the Socratic Method

Questions stimulate the mind into critical thinking.
Asking questions creates open loops that the mind wants to solve.

Now what?
So what?
Who would you be without your story?
So what happens after you get the power, money, fame, and women?
Are you a victim?
Do you really believe that acquiring more stuff is going to make you happy?
Why did need so badly from Susie that you felt you needed to hurt her to get it?
Are you just a body?
Why are you so afraid?
Was your mother/father really as bad as you make them out to be?
Are you to attached to your current belief system?
Why do you put that which created you last in your life?

5. Use object lessons. Show don't tell.

Instead of talking about using honey, demonstrate the use of honey in acton.
Experience trumps words.
Visual communication is powerful.

6. Use Repetition.

As asleep as we are you must repeat.
Unfortunately, we have to say the same thing, 100 different ways.
We have no idea if the truth will sink in the first time or the 200th time...you just never know so you have to repeat.
Say it over and over again...and then say it some more.