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Influence & PersuasionNLP Concepts

Being Congruent — Lance Armstrong

By 21st January 2013 No Comments

 

Just finished watching the Lance Armstrong interview with Oprah.end_g_lance-armstrong_mb_576

 

I’m really curious what people thought of it and the full ‘Lance coming out’ thing.

 

Personally, at the same time as feeling really sorry for the people Lance trampled on over the years to cover up his lie, I couldn’t help but get some kind of strange pleasure watching it.

 

I found it totally mesmerizing and fascinating how someone could keep hold of a lie for so long (and actually sue those who said anything to the contrary).

 

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that level of self deception on such a public scale before.

 

They showed footage of a previous interview where he spoke out against doping and he was SCARILY convincing…It was amazing the extent he managed to believe his own lies.

 

What I didn’t find as convincing was his apology on Oprah.

 

In NLP we have something called ‘congruence’. Congruence is basically when our body language, voice tone and intention match the content of what we are saying.

 

Incongruence is where we say something that mis-matches what we feel on the inside and it becomes obvious through our non-verbals and ways of expressing.

 

The only time I saw any real congruence in his interview was when he either talked about how it had affected his kids or when he occasionally let slip that he believed he had to dope because ‘everyone else was doing it.’

 

For me, the apology for doping and the decade of deceit was a pretty blatant example of someone ‘just saying something because they think it’s what they are supposed to say’.

 

Personally, I don’t think he really meant it.

 

It was a bit like a kid being made to apologise for stealing his sisters toys. He doesn’t really mean it and he’s only doing it to get some supper and stay up a bit later.

 

I don’t know how much later Lance will be able to stay up but the whole episode has been disturbingly engaging…

Steve

 

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