Health practitioners (Western and Eastern) manipulate your mind and body in all ways for the purpose of wellness. All healers seek to improve the quality of your very vitality.
So the idea that manipulation is always negative is a misnomer. That said, manipulation to convince somebody of a half-truth, a facade, or worse a lie is worthy of its tarnished and awful reputation.
Sometimes it is really, really hard to tell the difference between good and bad manipulation; especially if there is a power/knowledge imbalance. Healers make such great foils for both because we want to believe in their ability to “fix” us. Same goes with anyone we would want to bestow our faith and liberty too. Just think about the amount of personal information you provide every single day to technology companies (how many of you really decline the cookies??) so that you can enjoy the benefits of their creation. Simultaneously, you enjoy the curation the information brings but feel suckered by all of the marketing that comes your way.
The whole point is honest intention. Purposeful action with the direction towards creation. Faith.
If your study of human behavior is intended to game the system with your crappy business model, please go home. The idea that sales should be easy belies the idea that the process is not. Clients need to invest in the ability to get to the first step, nothing more. Quit selling the mountaintop as if that is the end all be all. The shiny penny is the manipulation and that is the difference between good and evil.
Your portfolio, your promise that it will be fantastic, to just trust you is the ultimate in showmanship and snake-oil sales tactics. The entire point of your creative endeavor is that the end is uncertain. Simply, how can you know what will be if you have not created it yet? No matter how many times you have done it before, you are doing it for this client, this time, as they, and they alone, deserve and require. If you want to sell a product, even if that product has a thousand permutations (hey, a particular model of a luxury car comes in many colors, with tons of different options) it is still a product. It is what it is. Art is not a product, it is a journey towards discovery for both the artist and the patron.
As with all relationships, there are phases in the artist/patron relationship that reveal the depth of personality and, hopefully, offer more moments for intimacy, empathy and reflection. Manipulating your client to skirt some, ignore others and hyper-focus on some is the work of an amateur. Today, more than ever, we do not need amateurs pretending to be professional artists. We need professionals to own the gravitas of the day, to explain the singularity of the moment in relation to all moments that have and will come. Yes, be the guide so that all can own the journey.
Even in these insane times, never forget that the creative business is the happy business, the purposeful choice to create joy for your clients so that they might be transformed. The great responsibility that comes with that is the bias to believe in the best outcome. No one wants to say their wedding sucked, the image is boring or their home design is horrible, so there is a vulnerability to those that would prey on this bias. The power imbalance gets exploited and the journey becomes a death march to the inevitable end. Ugh.
We can do so much better. How about we teach each and every client to simply buy the first step with the knowledge and understanding that every other step will be earned with purposeful intention and deep respect for the decisions to be made. Each decision will build on the next until there is completion. Of course, there will be ups, downs and all-arounds. That is the nature of the beast and completely besides the point. Positive manipulation is to shape clay for all to enjoy the sculpture, not an exercise in ego and self-indulgence that may or may not work out. Standing in your own light does not mean being an oracle, it means conviction on the ground upon which you find yourself. There will always be charlatans and slimy used car salespeople and the dark side of manipulation lives in your basest instinct. My prayer is that the world today will never excuse such behavior and will force you to be the artist you actually are. Shape today to earn permission to shape tomorrow. Let that be more than enough.
