🔌 Power of Nostalgia

Unlock powerful explanations by adding a layer of emotion to your logic.

Reading time: 2 minutes and 30 seconds

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😎 Power of Nostalgia

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If you are a logic-minded person, you’re going to hate this. But don’t blame me. Blame neuroscience, or even better, blame Jill Bolte Taylor, who said:

“Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.”

There is nothing wrong with being proud of your brain’s intellectual power, but don’t be fooled.

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Even if you’re a die-hard rational person capable of suppressing your feelings at will, deep down you too are driven by emotions.

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Logical thinking is a technology we've developed to feel in control. It allowed us to build knowledge, civilisations, and

Substack

– all remarkable achievements. But our emotions were the ones who invented art, entertainment, and reality show memes, which make our days beautiful and fun.

Remember how curious your young self was? Remember how exciting it was to learn new things? Remember how you were more willing to explore and experiment?

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When we are young, our thinking is powered by questions driven by emotions.

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But as we grow older, our default approach for explaining ideas shifts to the search for logic-driven answers.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you should abandon logic and ramble about your ideas based on how you feel about them. I’m talking about unlocking powerful ways to explain your ideas by adding a layer of emotion to activate deeper parts of your audience’s consciousness.

Nostalgia, for example, is one of the most powerful emotions. It evokes memories we’ve forgotten and feelings we’ve been neglecting. It reminds us of a time when we navigated the world with fewer expectations, when simple things were enough to engage our curiosity.

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Nostalgia illuminates past experiences which, sometimes, we can appreciate only in retrospect.

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Something powerful happens when you talk to the lonely kid forgotten inside people’s minds. Nostalgia creates a portal into a simpler time of their lives, when we’re all more open to learning from others.

Play this card right and you can multiply the impact of your communication.

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👉 Put It Into Practice

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• Pick an emotion that comes to mind when you think about your younger self. It can be a positive or a negative emotion.

• Try to remember specific situations or periods of your life when this emotion was prevalent.

• How can you connect this memory to the main idea you want to explain?

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🤯 Persuasive Explanations

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Simple explanations are portals into action. They uncover invisible patterns and show us how to apply what we’ve learned.

This is what Eric Weinstein does in the video below (I first saw it on Trevor McKendrick newsletter).

Notice how Eric uses nostalgia to reconnect us with our natural state of curiosity. The YouTube channel “Morphing Reality” added another layer of emotion to this video by syncing Eric’s explanation with clips from old movies we may have watched when we were younger.

This clip reminded me of a time when I walked the world with an open heart. It also reminded me I can go back to being that person anytime I want.

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Have a great week.

Best,

Diego