The Master Guide to Pattern Interrupts

After developing "The Pitch System", one odd phenomena stood on its own: The Pattern Interrupt. Confused with various mental hacks or other techniques, the pattern interrupt is unique in that it is relatively unknown for how powerful it actually is.

Most amateurs understand the power of stories, but when pitching, stories take a long time to tell. A lot of the effect comes from the listener getting absorbed in the narrative, but as time becomes shorter and shorter, stories have less persuasive ability.

Pattern interrupts are heavily undervalued in the field of persuasion because they are one of the most abstract tools of influence often confused with how their form. Despite this, they are the most powerful and fast building blocks of influence across all speech patterns. Thus, they are the key building block of influence when pitching.

 Part 1: The Basic Idea

Your brain doesn't have time to process all information as if it were novel. It's too much stress. Like driving a car on a long road trip, the human mind enjoys functioning on autopilot for 99% of its activities. People feel comfortable in certainty, predictability, and leisure.

Thus, when something breaks that pattern, the mind reacts in a very unique way.

Primitive Origins

If you were a human in tribal times, imagine living in the jungle. You are around your village, but you go out to gather water. You do this everyday. All of the sudden you feel a chill down your spine. You turn around.

A tiger is staring directly at you.

Holy fucking shit. Your world is destroyed, your safe space violate, your mind has so many questions:

• how did the tiger get there?
• Is it hungry?
• Is there another wounded animal that I can outrun?
• Am I going to make it?

What's Going On

The pattern interrupt is a built-in survival mechanism that is designed for the human mind to adapt to new information. If something breaks a pattern, the mind is wired to instantly recognize this and rapidly intake massive amounts of new information to adapt as quickly as possible.

This can be good or bad. That doesn't need to be debated here, but what is important is that pattern interrupts are a mechanism that can create a brief moment of massive information intake to the human mind.

Part 2: The Hypnotist's Bottom Card

When you think of influence, it's hard not to think of hypnosis. Most people think of a guy in a costume letting a pendulum swing back and forth, "you are getting sleepy...very very sleepy".

But in most cases, hypnotists use guided meditation, narrative constructs when you imagine things for induction where the patient enters a hypnagogic state: a state of mind in between awake and sleep where they are very suggestible.

Milton Erickson, the father of modern hypnotherapy, actually loved pattern interrupts. Most normal people would never attribute pattern interrupts to hypnosis, right?

The Mechanics of the Interrupt

Erickson would begin a standard handshake but, midway through, he would subtly alter his grip—perhaps lifting the subject’s hand, touching their wrist, or moving his hand in an unexpected direction.

1      The Initiation: The subject extends their hand, expecting a standard "grip and release."

2      The Violation: Erickson interrupts the physical rhythm.

3      The Confusion: The subject's brain "freezes" because the "Handshake TOTE" has no "Exit" command for this new data.

4      The Suggestion: In that moment of suspension, Erickson would provide a quiet, authoritative command. 

 Milton Erickson: The pioneer who turned social etiquette into a gateway for the subconscious. 

The "Ericksonian Handshake" is kind of hard to picture and I honestly can't imagine pulling it off, but the point is the use of pattern interrupts was a favorite of the father of modern hypnotherapy. This isn't a new discovery by any means. It doesn't matter the action or method, the principle is the same, it just has to interrupt the pattern.

Part 3: Why It Isn't Popular

If you look at modern sales blogs, pattern interrupts are often reduced to "being loud." You’ve seen the "Hey, do you have 27 seconds?" opener. Yes, these can be pattern interrupts but they can also be cheesy or impractical to use.

The number of pattern interrupts once can use are limitless if you are aware of its principles and you tailor them for various situations and intentions.

The Technique No Longer Interrupts

The fundamental flaw today is that people make lists of recycled pattern interrupts that eventually are so predictable, they don't interrupt. When every salesperson uses the same "clever" opener, that opener itself becomes a recognizable pattern. 

Pattern interrupts are unique as tools because the action is not important as the context. The same action, if expected, may not interrupt a pattern. If no interrupt of a pattern, there is no effect.

The Principle is Different than the Technique

Pattern interrupts can be prescribed, but mistaken for the action not the principle of influence. Take a "flex", a scarce symbol. If you buy a Ferrari, and people are shocked when you first get it or they don't know you, you can see the eyes widen or the shock. If you pull up later in the same car, no one's surprised.

In many cases of influence gimmicks, the awareness of pattern interrupts allow any student of the game to realize that the action itself is not as important as how it was a pattern interrupt. It's important to note context of when it was used. Today, social media templates are plentiful, but copying what worked for someone else only to realize it isn't working for you is maddening. The cycle repeats as you constantly search for more information with the same issue. If a tactic's value was really as a pattern interrupt, its efficacy can expire as it becomes less novel.

Part 4: Basic Pattern Interrupts

To make this the most helpful resource on the internet, we must move beyond theory into surgical application.

Example 1: Do the Opposite

Think of doing the opposite of what

The point isn't to debate which tactic works, if it's a pattern interrupt, by principle it has power as a tool of influence. If you are nice out of principle, it can be taken for granted.

If you are "surprisingly nice" when someone assumed you're a tool, that will affect the other party at a subconscious level.

Example 2: Silence

In a world of fast talkers, silence is the ultimate interrupt. 

Any moment where you pause, after some says something, right before you say something creates anticipation and intrigue, heightening attention to whatever it is that you are saying.

If you are a slow talker with way too many pauses, this will not work. In general tho, pauses and strategic silences are very reliable.

Example 3: Break the Rules

We are bound by our rules when we communicate. In most cases, we are bound to professionalism and formalities that themselves limit influential language.

Literally just breaking script can be a pattern interrupt.

Part 5: The Immutable Rules

Rule #1: A Pattern interrupt is only as influential as its pattern interruption

Rule #2: If anything creates influence in a short time, it's usually a type of pattern interrupt

Rule #3: Pitches must be comprised of pattern interrupts as the building block

Rule #4: A pattern interrupt lands when a person makes a visceral bodily reaction

Part 6: Sophisticated Pattern Interrupts

Some pattern interrupts have multiple facets and purposes, so I've left them here as I've collected them.

Taking Souls

Goggins invented a technique that gives him a feeling of empowerment that he calls taking souls.

Goggins introduces “Taking Souls” during Hell Week in SEAL training as a mental strategy he developed to push beyond pain, exhaustion, and the limits others expected him to hit. Essentially, it’s a mind game you play with yourself — and with your perceived “opponents” — by doing something so relentlessly hard, unexpected, and excellent that it mentally dominates them.  link

This is a type of pattern interrupt where just when someone thinks you are down and out of the count, you shatter that expectation so hard, they're frozen like their soul is gone.

Red Pill

This pattern interrupt is a truth that shatters your world view like Neo in the matrix. When your entire perspective of the world or frankly your perception of reality collapses from pattern interrupting truths, you experience something called a red pill moment.

Conclusion

Pattern interrupts are the most important building blocks of influence especially in pitching. To master the pitch you have to understand pattern interrupts from first principles, generate them on the fly to make your ideas land.