How to express tactfully one's intentions or needs? To marry intention with action - this  is a life skill. If we do not have someone to model after to train this skill in the context of the subculture in force, we are bound to make social mistakes casting around for appropriate way to express ourselves.

Establishing rapport is the most important ingredient. Thinking about consequences is another. Deciding how to pop the question that may accelerate a "non-obligatory" state of friendship into reciprocal give and take is tricky. Key seems to be noticing how people treat their friends with whom they have already established trust of this sort.

Usually, the answer is often that there has already been a "give and take" in the context of the relationship that you may have missed noticing. Each person has a certain language of bonding built out of unique combination of experiences they find essential to establishing trust. Trust in this context is earned, not a given - although many people will declare that they tend to offer strangers the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

For some people this is attending school with them; for others it is working together. Some cannot trust you until you find out a revealing secret and forgive or ignore it; some keep you away until they have a need so great they must ask for help. As they realize you are stellar at offering what they need and they also find out the offer was not an "exchange," it wakes them up that the two of you have established what connection means. Sometimes establishing this connection can happen by merely emulating the way their family members and good friends treat them - gradually. Sometimes this connection is just that the two of you have more to talk about, or that you sense some aspect in character in common or differing in each other that you'd like to explore. That's all the further you need to take it until the two of you want to explore more.

Sometimes there are people who create energy from being with others and spend it on accomplishment...and people who get energy from doing things and spend it on relationships. It is the category of people who love to do things and spend it on relationships, (the more dynamic ones) who feel intimacy is somewhat dangerous. Sometimes people who like to accomplish things are lousy at relationships, because they're somewhat scared of intimacy and the demands it may entail. If you were a connecting person, you would want to make sure you are NOT making a deal with this sort of person. Otherwise you might get lost in an endless "deal-making" competitive activity with some "aftertastes" of hidden agendas.

Whereas, with people who are into "hanging out," they often have no problems being generous with their time because they will be getting a benefit from your presence, without any directed benefit. No "invested interest" or agenda, in other words. It was modeling those connecting people, this can allow a dynamic person suggest to "take turns" benefiting each other to establish a warm and fuzzy feeling of mutual benefit. In this context, "taking turns" isn't "making a deal."

Tacit agreements are tricky, aren't they? But they're what make social interaction so interesting.

A characteristic is of genius is fascination. Investigating different psychological systems that attempt to explain and group human nature has been fascinating for me. What gets grouped and what characteristics are considered mutually exclusive is curious. IMHO, there is always an exception where the person who does not fit the categorization marries the opposition that has been defined as exclusionary, (talent for memory and visualization included.) Generalizations must be drawn in personality description systems such as these, which obviously must exclude the unusual. The goals of these systems to include as many people as possible in their descriptions of human nature are indeed heroic. (Of course, some of these systems are more inclusive than others.)

The operacy, elegance and scope of some of these brilliant solutions are a demonstration of genius. For instance, Edward de Bono swears that thinking ability can be taught. He's spent his lifetime proving just that. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn't seem to value the need for having people think for themselves.

Kathy Kolbe originated the Kolbe Conative Index. It's based on the idea about why people approach how they go after a goal differently. In her description, people have a POV that's a mixture of four values; it's as much an advantage to be resistant in a quality as to highly prefer it.

There are many instances when a spark of genius emerged quite young and determined the course of life. Philo Pharnsworth imagined the TV by looking at plowed rows of dirt and realizing slight variations could create pictures viewed from afar when he was young and spent his adult life figuring out how to take that idea for a ride. As a teen, Marty Roberts complied his observations of wild mustang herds; from these observations he originated a whole new approach to training that allowed him to "join up" (rather than "break') a completely wild horse to a saddle in as little as fifteen minutes.

Geniuses tend to see whole systems where none have seen it before. The significance of a brilliant idea is often difficult to determine at the time it happens. It is genius to combine details or characteristics that most of the rest of us have passed over into what becomes, over time, into being a synergistic synthesis. Often a leap of insight "Genius Thinking" has have made needs to be honed and worked on to explain to others or turn into something useful. Sometimes the world of geniuses who find a speciality is so unique that it's impossible to explain it, even to those in the field!

Edward de Bono believes this capacity is a thinking ability that can be learned. What you do think? Can genius be learned? Or is person born a genius?

How do you perceive? Well, you just do it. That's an inadequate answer, so I decided to do some thinking about this.

Perhaps the way I teach people to observe themselves would be relevant to making up a language for perception. It's my business to be teaching people to perceive what they take for granted by teaching Alexander Technique. I use the often ignored kinesthetic sense as a medium, rather than the visual or auditory...but maybe we can cross-pollinate with it. Maybe we can use the same process and apply it to perception in general - say, the visual sense.

In Alexander Technique classes, students walk across the room and try to describe how they are walking. They can't describe much, usually. So I introduce them to categories to help them to form some questions for themselves. These categories function like thinking tools to organize and focus their point of view.

The categories are:

• timing
• sequence
• quality
• direction

Once they have these categories, their ability to describe what they're experiencing for themselves gets unleashed. Their new ability to observe and describe what is happening works so well they can later design, on the fly, inventive ways for getting past some pretty serious self-imposed limitations.

So perhaps we could do this with perception in general. We could make general categories to help people ask themselves specific questions. Answering these questions would give us new perceptual information out of what we usually take for granted.

We're talking about the raw perception, not the content. So - how we direct attention to say, the visual sense with these categories? If I were to apply the same categories I just mentioned, I'd get something like:

• Quality: attention can be focused, like a searchlight, or diffuse like an overhead light.
  

• Timing: depending on when you pay attention, different things will be happening. A frozen image will show you stuff that you would miss in a movie, for instance. Bits and pieces do not have the same effect as the whole. Timing will influence the figure-ground relationship of what you can see. If you're moving fast while traveling, you'll have a whole different experience compared to moving slowly.
  

• Sequence: chains of paying attention to one thing after another bring different results; and mixing up sequences actually has an associative emotional effect. It's easy to mistake sequence for cause and effect.
  

• Direction: Where we are oriented contributes to Point Of View. POV and motive about what you want others to do, react and agree with you colors how you describe what you see.

Anyone else want to try one or more of these four categories about perception that I made up and apply them to help generate a new language for perception?

There are also some experiments I have people do to teach this ability... I'm not sure if these experiments can translate to a purely written format, but I'm willing to try this if you are...

A lifetime of struggling against the status quo tends to beat creativity out of people. Isolation is a dream-killer. Innovators must fight to get their most brilliant solutions accepted, and the when acceptance comes, others take the credit. Let's imagine the opposite.

Let's say it's a given that we have an audience of self-selected innovators with a high level of operacy in the real world. If you were addressing such a crowd, certainly it would be a very interesting talk that we might have not heard before. Let's say this crowd already knows your history. Being free of having to prove anything, what a pleasure it would be to share and hear your hopes, virtual questions, fears & dreams.

You can always find out what someone has done - in their finished work. But you don't really know where their work is headed. For that - they must reveal and bare what is unfinished, unsure, unanswered. Hearing someone's personal story helps you to ask the questions that don't have answers yet in yourself. Revealing cultural or personal shortcomings, mismatches in presentation, to show the mistakes, the rough edges - this is the ultimate in daring. As someone's story is told, sometimes the lack of successes say more than the hits.

Imagine if you could inspire & motivate what you value into becoming a practical priority for others. What would change? What do you hope for?

When I look around for this audience in real life, I find some of them gathered at various places on the internet. I look at the profiles of people who are joining any particular forum, and already there are some amazing people there. But they're not yet talking to each other much. Why not? I highly recommend people make personal contact with others through any forum. Let's take ourselves for the ride we deserve! Abandon shyness!!

In the 1970s, there were lots of "hippies" with idealistic dreams. Mostly these dreams were merely rebellion and a conviction that there must be a better way. Since the last forty years, now we have the results of innovation developed and in place & ready to be used... WHY are people NOT USING THEM already?

This challenge should be plopped squarely in the lap of an audience of highly functional people. They won't be able to resist making real things happen. It's already happening! For any dream you have now - someone is already doing it - easier to join with them!

Any ideas how do we get this current swarm of interest for new educational means & business innovation together with some of the innovators' workable, time-tested & simple practices? There are so many good ideas that have already been hatched, sweat over, worked out and are in place. All we have to do is use them.

What's your favorite one these days? Why do you think it's important?

On the road to confidence, each piece of the puzzle offers the reward of a new skill. It's not merely a struggle to get to zero.

Sometimes behind a lack of confidence is usually some sort of fear or assumption about the consequence of revealing thoughts, feelings or values. Such as, "If I get noticed, then I'll get squished like a pretty bug." Suspect these conclusions of "If....then...." Once conclusions get uncovered, check them out and see if how they're made is really true. Many times there are mistaken assumptions and logical fallacies involved. Often feelings don't make sense. Reassurance can use the proof of reason. Find out how to reassure yourself without having to lie or follow it with a snide remark. Figuring out how to do this will make anyone a better observer of what happens. Observation will tell the difference between responsibility and associated sequences that are circumstantially affecting outcomes.

Delivering reassurance to one's own fears without lying will teach a person to deliver effective compliments that can't be brushed aside or suspect. If you said to this woman you admire, "you are so confident!" I'm sure she'd disagree with you, because women are taught that confidence is arrogance. (Women modestly often just get down to the business of doing what needs doing. The proof is in the pudding.) But if you offered your observation that, "Your openness works like a virus that disarms people," she might laugh and tell you about someone who wasn't affected in this way.

Often these mistaken conclusions involve mere opinions that are backed up with self-selected memories. This is a common phenomena that happens to many people when they feel bad. In a bad state, people often flicker through all similar situations of their past, seeking a factual basis of their own inadequacy or short-comings - or other suspected negative emotional state such as sadness, stupidity or thoughtlessness, etc. Questioning the point of doing this to yourself is productive. Never discount physical comfort as a contributing force. Learn how the reptilian survival brain works in images and how this part of the brain doesn't listen to linguistic qualifiers such as "Don't ...." Once you know more how this works, then you can also construct moments when you intentionally select the positive outcomes and positive effects of your compassionate and capable resourcefulness as well as other admirable qualities.

Because of the unknown and unpredictable nature of reality, it's easy to imagine that the contents of thoughts magically affect outcome. For instance, it's very common for someone to feel responsible for a death of a loved one in some way, even when they actually had nothing to do with it. You may find that it's not so much content, but the routine means of thinking that affects outcomes. Learn creative thinking skills. Careful what you let yourself repeat, because you'll train yourself.

Also, believe others when they tell you the positive ways about how you affect them. Absorb compliments when they come without imaging you'll suffer from evil effects. For instance, as a young girl I used to feel my mouth didn't look attractive. At thirteen, a cute young man in his mid-twenties saw me holding my mouth funny at a public function. He followed me around repeatedly, taking photos of my "beautiful" mouth while reciting how notable of an artist and photographer he was. I'm not sure he even had film in his old-format camera, but by doing so, he got me over a self-consciousness about my appearance.

After checking assumptions out about conclusions, if you decide they are true, you can deal with them in various ways. Often the consequence of the feared result is not all that bad and if you try it voluntarily, you may actually prefer it. You can also regard the consequences if they're a force of nature and not pointed specifically against you. You are not the target.

One of my big discoveries in the process of losing my shyness was that other people were very self-involved, especially young people. The older ones are on auto-pilot. Most people are a product of their conditioning and have much less control over the ways they effect others than they would prefer. Just as a surfer must figure out a few facts to ride a wave successfully, there are a few things you may be lacking to successfully navigate in the social world. Learn them and become aware enough to use them appropriately, without getting upset that you should already know these things. Forgive yourself. Nobody can help where they start from, but they can decide what they're going to do about it from now on. Just as a perfect wave doesn't care if it gets surfed, these factors, (that may involve people's reactions) may not care about your feelings, or even your survival.

A lack of confidence can be a defensive stance of hiding to protect...something. You may think you know what this "something" is, but usually the meat of it is hiding behind the reaction of shrinking, shirking or avoidance. This takes persistence. Trace the reaction back to right before it's about to happen, and there you'll find the original feelings that put the solution in place. Of course, your reactive solution was viable at the time you designed it originally, it only later became obsolete. Now that you've grown and know the origin, you can choose another way. The habitually reactive solution is still there to use in a pinch.

Sometimes you can just ask people, "How do I affect you?" But beware of setting in place a tacit agreement that you'll always be agreeable. The danger of asking, as Sarah points out, is then the responsibility will be on your shoulders to accommodate other people's short-comings that you supposedly "caused." It's never a good thing to allow fears or short-comings to run the course of relationships, whether they be personal or social.

Finally, observe the positive state in others you want to embody and note how they express it. Quiz them. Try stating these observations positively, not merely stating them by defining what you do not want. If can't you say what you want completely or only in a metaphor (as you've done by saying it's a colored attitude,) you can always find more practical evidence of how it actually works as you move toward it.

One of my most useful observations about happiness came from realizing that it's subtle, calm qualities were very different from the strong intensities of my imperative need to rebel against unhappiness. Happiness was not a dizzy, drunk intensity - it was curious, quiet, unassuming & absorbed. This has turned out to be true for other topics as well. The positive expression of what is desired probably won't have the same qualities of what you don't want.

For instance, if you realized that modesty and being humble are expressions of confidence, make observations about how are those qualities expressed in behavior. What happened when these expressions of that value were practiced by you? Did they have the intended results on others and the situation? Did things improve when you gave up specifying results? As you gain more experience in the world, how might you improve the expression of your values as they become more refined, flexible and sophisticated?

I know, I know. I started this blog because it's a place where I write. But anyone who knows me would also know what I fan I am of animals. Believe that until we get around to communicating with animals, we will not stand a chance to communicate to an extra-terrestrial. We already have them here, they're called cetaceans. Why have we not yet figured out they are smarter than we are?

There have been composers before who based their musical creations on the sounds of animals. But this is a slightly different. Watch it and you'll see how it is different. Enjoy!

How do you perceive? Well, you just do it. That's an inadequate answer, so I decided to do some thinking about this.

Perhaps the way I teach people to observe themselves would be relevant to making up a language for perception. It's my business to be teaching people to perceive what they take for granted by teaching Alexander Technique. I use the often ignored kinesthetic sense as a medium, rather than the visual or auditory...but maybe we can cross-pollinate with it. Maybe we can use the same process and apply it to perception in general - say, the visual sense.

In Alexander Technique classes, students walk across the room and try to describe how they are walking. They can't, usually. So I introduce them to categories to form some questions for themselves. These categories function like thinking tools to organize and focus their point of view.

The categories are:

• timing
• sequence
• quality
• direction

Once they have these categories, their ability to describe what they're experiencing for themselves gets unleashed. Their new ability to observe and describe what is happening works so well they can later design, on the fly, inventive ways for getting past some pretty serious self-imposed limitations.

So perhaps we could do this with perception in general. We could make general categories to help people ask themselves specific questions. Answering these questions would give us new perceptual information out of what we usually take for granted.

We're talking about the raw perception, not the content. So - how we direct attention to say, the visual sense with these categories? If I were to apply the same categories I just mentioned, I'd get something like:

• Quality: attention can be focused, like a searchlight, or diffuse like an overhead light.
  

• Timing: depending on when you pay attention, different things will be happening. A frozen image will show you stuff that you would miss in a movie, for instance. Bits and pieces do not have the same effect as the whole. Timing will influence the figure-ground relationship of what you can see. If you're moving fast while traveling, you'll have a whole different experience compared to moving slowly.
  

• Sequence: chains of paying attention to one thing after another bring different results; and mixing up sequences actually has an associative emotional effect. It's easy to mistake sequence for cause and effect.
  

• Direction: Where we are oriented contributes to Point Of View. POV and motive about what you want others to do, react and agree with you colors how you describe what you see.

Anyone else want to try one or more of these four categories about perception that I made up and apply them to help generate a new language for perception?

How can people not get seduced by content or what everyone else does? How can people focus instead on strengthening the constructive means - the How of thinking skills? What motivates people to remember to think?

Some ideation (the new word for "brainstorming") on those questions:

• Make the content boring, funny or not make sense so the "How" becomes focal.
• Need ways to compensate for time of arrival. (Blue hat, yes; but I'll bet there are further perceptual means & actions that might contribute to this.)
• Enhance the meaning of the result - in a sense, make the goal more attractive. (Such as in story-telling and testimonials of how people have benefited.)
• Make a way for people to interject as they are respond to what other people have done -" I could do better than that!!"
• Appeal to people who love to brag or show and tell, they will popularize the activity to others and make it into a "fad." ( Bumper stickers, Badge of identity - "I Think Before Reacting. ...Usually!") ...would be great on a car bumper.
• ;o)

OK, back to the question itself. For me, questions that are framed in "opposites" beg to be restated in the positive. (Thus, my proliferation of restatement.) What is "opposite" is culturally defined. Instead, take away the implication that one concept is at odds with the next concept.


Some of these could be:
How come thinking tools - and frameworks - improve thinking skills the way they do? Can we describe more about how thinking skills and examining the frames of how we are thinking work more effectively than discussion to better, problem solve & create?
Frames...Re-Framing...Why not draw more pictures (mind-mapping style) while linearly discussing to help note our tangents and return to what has been left out? (Mind-mapping in this case would be used during discussion as a variant of recognizing the value of framework.)

So, reversing the directive here: Transform discussion by applying tools of thought. (As opposed to the urge educated people usually have to imagine we can transform thought by applying tools of discussion, ie: taking turns at lecturing.)
Since, seldom is there "only one" answer to everything... once we ask that question some of the answers might be...

• Take out the desire to convince (the debate model) from the discussion activity.
• Go slow - speed of arrival tends to activate habitual routines, as well as get everyone excited & encourage them to compete for things like "most original", "fastest delivery", "limited time."(That's why this medium is so wonderful! I can take as much time as I need here.)
• Ask specifically for a certain person's contribution. (This brings reticent people forward, because talking style doesn't have anything to do with thinking ability and this action might minimize competition.)
• Ask others to figure out other ways to invite contributions.
• Allow 'secret ballot' contributions. - (The idea of a free-play space without the authority of authorship where ideas are separated from who had them.)

Then the second question: Understanding vs Practical Application

Since I was a person who tended to use words such as "Never" and "Always" I have learned to spot these words as an indicator that some powerful assumptions could be in place that might benefit from examination and revision.
Idea: Identify certain words or perceptual cues as trigger indicators that Thinking Now Would Be A Good Idea

Let's say skillful use doesn't come from habit, it comes from fascination. (That has been the case with me.) How to foster fascination for applying what you "understand"?

Perhaps appeal to the "gamboling chance" of novelty: a significant result or insight often occurs unexpectedly. Hindsight is 20/20, but foresight is...boring and careful. What if thinking skills, i.e: foresight were presented as a way to get ready to be lucky? A way to shine intuition? A person would hone thinking skills because it would sometimes result in a "jackpot" of benefits. Most of these "jackpots" of major scientific discoveries come from noting accidents. Insights come from noting points that were never before combined.

These new accidents don't have a chance to happen if experimentation is not allowed. This photo taken by Marti Holland out his back window looks like a Maxwell Parish painting, but it's just a photo. "I make as many mistakes as it takes." - Kenneth Feldsott

So practicing the tapping of the unknown would extend tolerance for unfamiliarity. What is new feels strange, unclassified, so a tolerance for what feels strange at first needs to be practiced. Otherwise people revert to habitual means, and the ease of creative thinking is regarded as "hard to do."

This could be practiced at a perceptual level. (Provide people with perceptual illusion experiences to butter them up? Make them laugh?) Sustaining a state of unanswered, unknowable questioning enhances the ability to be open to spotting an assumption that had been overlooked, the inception of discovery. Perhaps there is a pre-discovery phase we are passing over without noticing? Make a list of your favorite virtual questions...

I have taught myself to creatively problem solve while angry. It was a very strange skill to learn, not a skill which I'd recommend to others. Better to not to get to this level in your ability to have to manage anger in the first place!

Twenty years ago, I had a relationship going with a person skilled in being manipulative. When I entered into the relationship, I observed that he also possessed ethics on when and where to apply his considerable skills in argumentation. Ten years into the relationship, he eventually used his superior intellect and debate skills on me personally - something which I did not anticipate would ever happen. I had to firmly establish my boundaries and keep them in place when he decided that all things we had established and agreed upon previously were re-negotiable. It was a trying time, but I managed it. I would not have done so well had I not had the ability to creatively problem solve while angry. I have to admit that I was relieved when the relationship fell apart for practical reasons, because it had become a toss-up whether it was good or bad for me personally. I'm sure that the demands for training the skill to be able to problem solve while angry mitigated some of the bad effects; but perhaps it also prolonged the inevitable conflicts that ended the relationship later.

A more common situation where this skill would be useful to model would be during the parenting of teens - who again, would believe that everything should be re-negotiable.

There were some pre-requisite skills to make this ability possible. These were the ability to stop, pause or interrupt one's own habitual reaction that can be best practiced when one is not in the throes of an intense emotion. It requires a high degree of practice concerning the ability to surrender one's goal. In practice, there is a short window of time available to veto an action that the thought of doing the act has previously prepared oneself to do. You are already preparing to act as soon as you think of doing so. It's quite telling when people around you believe you have first gotten angry - usually this is quite a bit before you realize it yourself.

It's very difficult to veto a reaction that has already begun once it has gotten rolling. This implies sophisticated exploration of expectations. Also useful are pointedly specific observations of how a specific person's anger routinely works.

I learned this skill through the study of Alexander Technique. I'm not sure there is any other forum to learn such a thing, but I imagine anger management class would have these elements. Most commonly, this skill is usually described negatively as "poor impulse control." As far as I know, there is never anyplace suggested where "good impulse control" is taught - other than early in life by parental guidance.

There is recently a field of study that seems to teach this skill specifically, but it's tailored toward adults. It's in the negotiation, something called "Appreciative Inquiry," mediation or arbitration fields. Also, at www.newconversations.net there are free downloadble e-books on communication tools that seem quite useful. Most of these contain lots of talk and philosophy, but some of them provide practice and it's those that are most effective. Some interesting books on this are classics in negociation by Ury and Fisher. It's a series that started with "Getting to Yes." "Getting Past No, dealing with difficult people" More recently Fisher wrote a book with a guy named Shapiro dealing with how to manage emotions during negotiation called "Beyond Reason, using emotions as you negotiate."

It is a good thing to make the agreement that only one person in an argument is allowed to be "out of control." Obviously, it's best for the safe expression of anger when this role is rotated! It has been documented that women in particular suffer quite a bit in their health more than men if they do not speak up and make their "not very nice" concerns known.

I did hear about a study where four year olds were told that if they waited to eat something yummy, they could have twice as much of it when the grownups returned. Or they could eat the smaller portion that was in front of them now. The study then followed the kids who managed to wait compared to those who did not. It was found the ability to wait possibly resulted in a significant difference in success.

My mother was a great model for how to deal with anger. She and my sister used to fight like cats and dogs when I was a kid. By the time I became a teen, she had learned a few things about anger. She told me that people do not bother to get angry if they are not concerned about the relationship. She also modeled proper "cleaner" ways to fight. She never brought up "the kitchen sink" i.e: unrelated issues. She never tried to wound intentionally, retaliate or say things she might regret later. She would never accused me of being stupid and managed to resist telling me to do what she did not want me to do. For instance, she might yell at me, "I thought you're smart enough to think ahead about how your actions would affect others." - this instead of the classic name-calling routine of: "You thoughtless, selfish, cruel complainer. Why should what you want always come first?"

She also made it quite clear to me that people who are out of control while angry say things they don't mean. This is mostly because people get scared - fear is a big component of anger. She gave me ways to calm myself down when I got angry and left me the time and places to do so. Then she modeled the ability to talk out our concerns that made us want to get angry with each other, once we were calmed down enough to figure out what we really thought and wanted.

So it was this fortunate, firm foundation, along with learning Alexander Technique, that led me to be able to manage to learn later to creatively problem solve and actually think while angry. I believe it's a rare thing. It should be more common.

I have a trick when I have no clue how to do something - such as start a business. This trick assumes that you live in a big enough town where a number of other people do the thing that you think they could tell you about. If you don't, you'll be calling a place where that is possible.

This is cold-calling, actually. It's not so terrible when you realize that you'll be calling business owners and employees who are used to serving the public anyway. The fact that you're not going to buy something from them at this time has nothing to do with it - and they know that. They know you might buy something from them in the future...or convince someone else to do just that. So it's nowhere near the situation where you are convincing them to give you money. You're just asking for a little bit of their time and experience.

The other thing is the myth that they won't want to talk with you because you are the competition. If you are a business owner, you know that it is good business to give away some part of what you do. Also, as any business owner knows, talk is cheap. It's the sweat of actually doing something that gets you down the road on it - and they have a big head start over you. They won't feel threatened because there's only a slim likelihood that you will ever ascend to a situation where you are taking anything away from their livelihood.

So - now you need some idea about what to ask them, and how to get the right person on the phone who might have the time to talk with you.

You write down three questions. You can frame it generally as a wishes and obstacles - such as "I want this" and "This is what is in the way." Then you would put an extra question at the end in hopes of getting a reference to who you could ask next in case the answer is "No."

One, state what you want, in as few words as possible. Pretend you're writing a text message and you have to make it under 140 characters.

Two: you admit what exactly you don't know about it.

So, if they can't help you, your last question would be, "
do they know someone who might know the answer to your question?"

Now, you're going to call a bunch of businesses up at their place of business and ask them these questions.

Now, when to call them... You want to call when the person might have some time to talk with you. For instance, don't call a restaurant at noon or dinner, etc. Usually calling people from 8-10 am is best, I've found...but the other good time is right before they have to do the routine for closing time.

For those introverts who need an example of a script, first you say, "Hi, I'm _____ and I'm learning/need info/need to find out how to _____. Do you have time to answer a couple of questions for me if I could pick your brain for a little bit?

If they say they're too busy, say you don't want to bother them now and would it be OK if you called at another time when they're not so busy. IF so, they'll tell you when that would be. If not, don't call them back.

You can always ask your question if they know anyone else who might have time to talk with you.

If you personally have any idea who that could be, save who you believe to be the "best" person to talk to for last.

The first person you talk to about what you need will give you the correct phrase of words to use on your next call. Then the next person you talk to will give you part of the answer, which will encourage you to start a new question, and the next an additional idea about what is a good question might come quite a bit down the road from that conversation. Perhaps then you'll feel more comfortable about establishing rapport with a stranger. So, the next person will enjoy talking with you and tell you a lot of what you need. By the time you're calling the supposedly "best" person to talk to, you're asking VERY specific questions that show you're serious and dedicated to finding the information and are not "wasting their time."

Next time you have a burning question, try it and let me know how you do.