It is not important that you think of pink elephants right now. Or, even, if you can, then, remember a time when you might have thought of a pink elephant? And how the pink elephant made you feel, and then remember a future where you've been thinking about pink elephants for some time. Kind of amazing isn't it, how you came to think of a pink elephant that time? It's kind of warm, fuzzy, comforting pink feeling, just washing pink warmness all over your body and bathing you in the comforting embrace when you think of a pink elephant.
Yes, you can make me think about pink elephants (though I'm not convinced you can make me associate them with a warm fuzzy feeling). But you can't change my values or my memories by writing me a paragraph like that. You could if you kidnapped and brainwashed me, but that's also something I plan to avoid. It is precisely because my mind is vulnerable and malleable that I want to limit other people's write access to it.
My house has windows, and you can see in, and you can put up a poster outside my window and I might see and read it and think about something. That's not the same as letting you walk into my house and touch me (or remote control my toilets or whatever).
All joking aside, the mention of NLP above reminded me of some stuff I'd read a while back. I'm fairly skeptical of NLP, but I can see how some of those techniques might have a certain sort of value.
