"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler."-Henry David Thoreau

My daughter, Victoria, is becoming a beautiful pianist. Beginning piano students have a huge body of knowledge to learn-how to read music, hand position, tempo, foot pedals, where on the keyboard to place their hands. It takes lots and lots of effort to make a piece sound effortless. Students are not simply given a Beethoven Piano Sonata and expected to put it all together at once and play it.

Even an advanced player learns a piece 'hands alone', as in, learning the right hand separately from the left hand and then, eventually, putting them together.

There's a long road from beginning student to a sonata.

As with many disciplines, in music, as in persuasion, learning something deeply is about breaking things down to their elements and then practicing.

I think everything is powerful in its simplicity and when we start junking it up with too much complexity, that's when it goes awry.

There are many people in the world of persuasion who have not succeeded--trainers and teachers, speakers and students. I believe the reason they weren't able to succeed is because they didn't break things down to the simplest form and practice.

The way I have excelled is that I keep things very simple. I continue to go back to the basics until I master the idea, until I can do it backwards and forwards, in my sleep, blindfolded, in the middle of my dreams. . . I want to be absolutely fluent in all the details.

When I started getting back to the fundamentals a funny thing happened. . . more and more complex things just started to naturally and easily happen.

The most profound things in the world are very simple. When you master the simple things, more and more you'll find the big things come together with ease.

Take a few moments and evaluate the core of what you're persuading people to do. What are the simple principles? Focus on these, and watch your results begin to climb.