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Reason to Study Negotiation #6: Every Human Interaction Is a Negotiation

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easier to get a date with her two weeks later when she breaks up with her boyfriend and is crying behind the school bleachers alone wearing a dirty pair of sweat pants. Great negotiators know how to manipulate time to their advantage and know that positions change as time moves on, and a stalemate today is a deal tomorrow.

As a graduate of a post-secondary institution and having spent sixteen years in school, I learned many things, but very few important things for getting I wanted out of life. In fact, no one ever asked in elementary school, middle school, high school, or university anything about what I wanted.

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me

that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked

me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’.

They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them

they didn’t understand life.”

—John Lennon

It wasn’t until four years after graduating from post-secondary education and in my pursuit of becoming a professional real estate investor did I discover that negotiation was even a subject! I was shocked at the difference between what it took to become a smart negotiator versus what it took to succeed in school and get A’s.

To be a good negotiator you must be defiant, know what you want, assert your position, ask, question, challenge, validate, and get what you want. It is a completely opposite skill set from anything taught in traditional schools, and I can see why. The traditional school system was designed in Prussia long ago. In fact, Prussia is no longer a country, but the school system that originated in Prussia still exists. The system was designed to create obedient soldiers and employees, and the last thing that the masters of society want are an army of children who know how to negotiate. If the children knew how to negotiate in schools, there would be riots and anarchy. Best of all, the school system would have to reform because it is