Some moments are unusually ‘soft’—the mind is searching, uncertain, or freshly oriented, and a small cue can steer the whole conversation.
These privileged moments appear at transitions: when someone has just agreed to something small, just been asked a question, just walked into a space, just turned their head toward a stimulus. The brain wants coherence fast, so it grabs what’s available.
If the first thing you place in that moment fits your goal—trust, collaboration, scarcity, safety—then what follows feels like a natural continuation rather than a new demand.
The trick is not to push harder. It is to choose the moment and the first focus inside it. Miss that, and you’ll spend the rest of the exchange fighting to undo the starting frame.