Last week I got a call from an acquaintance of mine. He said, 'Remember that conversation we had about Africa a few weeks ago? Well, I just checked my e-mail and you won't believe it. I won an international lottery originating in Africa. You know, I'm just convinced everything happens for a reason, don't you think?'

Before I responded, I thought about this a moment. 'You know, maybe you're right. Everything does happen for a reason. It's a very fortuitous thing that you called me today to tell me about this, for example.' I went on to explain that these international lotteries are a scam, none of them are real, and that it's a good thing he called to tell me about it so that I could explain the scam to him.

From this conversation I realized that people are always looking for evidence to support what they want in their environment. In his case my acquaintance wanted to believe this lottery was real and used a coincidental conversation as his support. He began to believe in the 'everything happens for a reason' foundation.

It's unfortunate that these sort of scams exist. And I hated to burst his bubble, but it kept him safe and he learned something about not taking everything at face value. I learned that this phrase or language pattern 'everything happens for a reason' can be used to enable us to influence and persuade on a very deep and profound level.

Why do people look for supporting evidence for what they want in their environment? Oftentimes they do this because our world is very unstable. Whenever there's a tremendous lack of stability, with everything kind of up in the air, people start turning to religion, they start turning to God, they start turning to spirituality and they become more superstitious.

If you don't believe in God, or you're not a spiritual person, my point is not to influence you towards or away from anything except towards a language pattern or away from not being as successful as you like, that you'll be able to use these patterns for your benefit and for the benefit of your clients. As I explain this pattern to you, please understand, my goal is to break things down in a way that gives us tremendous power with our language, our words and persuasion, and in so doing, help you to have more success in your life. That's my purpose in this discussion.

When I said to my acquaintance that 'everything happens for a reason' I was alluding to something more than what he understood was happening. I went on to say, 'It's a good thing we're talking because. . . ' This applies that there is something more to it than what he was thinking about. It set the stage for me to have an entry point into his mind and explain the difficulty he might have faced had he moved forward with this lottery.

As persuaders, we can give people the supporting evidence they are looking for. These language patterns are powerful and very popular in our current cultural lexicon.

Here's an example of where and how to use this: say you're an adviser and you have a potential client or prospect who says something very positive like, 'It's lucky that I'm talking with you because . . . ' This is an excellent entry place for this pattern. Simply respond, 'Absolutely. I completely agree. You know, there are no accidents and everything happens for a reason.'

Is that a stretch to say? I don't think it's a stretch for anybody, no matter what our belief system is. After all, everything happens for a reason, it's just a matter of whether or not it's a reason you like.

No language pattern is an island and our goal as persuaders is to layer pattern upon pattern and these patterns piece together a deeper sense of reality when you do this right, what you're going to be doing is using all sorts of these patterns at high speed.