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Power of Suggestion

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Today is the anniversary of the day in 1860 when 11 year old Grace Bedell wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln, a homely candidate for President of the United States.

Hon A B Lincoln…

Dear Sir
My father has just home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brother’s and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husband’s to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can I think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a little baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter direct to Grace Bedell Westfield Chatauque County New York
I must not write any more answer this letter right off Good bye

Grace Bedell

Clearly, Grace Bedell was the first-ever modern political consultant, recognizing that looks matter when it comes to moving the American electorate. That is a dubious distinction. But we know Grace Bedell is the Mother of Political Consultants, because she got results. The candidate who would become president answered her just four days later:

Grace Bedell, Aghast at a Bare Face

Miss Grace Bedell

My dear little Miss

Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received – I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters – I have three sons – one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age – They, with their mother, constitute my whole family – As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now?

Your very sincere well wisher
A. Lincoln

That was a fence straddling answer if there ever was one – responding to a request with a question. But Lincoln must have taken her seriously. He grew a beard shortly afterwards and now we can’t picture him without one.

There is no record of Grace Bedell responding to Lincoln’s answer, though one account describes a meeting between the two shortly after the election, when the president-elect’s train passed through her town.

Wikipedia credits the Schenectady Gazette for Grace’s account of her face-to-face meeting with Lincoln.

“He climbed down and sat down with me on the edge of the station platform,” she recalled. “‘Gracie,’ he said, ‘look at my whiskers. I have been growing them for you.’ Then he kissed me. I never saw him again.”

Today, a presidential candidate having a private moment and a kiss with an 11 year old girl would automatically throw the election to his opponent. But 1860 was a different time. Four years later Grace wrote again, this time to ask Lincoln for a job with the Treasury Department.

I have heard that a large number of girls are employed constantly and with good wages at Washington cutting Treasury notes and other things pertaining to that Department. Could I not obtain a situation ther?[sic] I know I could if you would exert your unbounded influences a word from you would secure me a good paying situation which would at least enable me to support myself if not to help my parents, this, at present – is my highest ambition.

Nice try, but this one met with considerably less success then the beard –o-gram. I guess you don’t get everything you ask for, even if you take the time to put it in a letter. And remember, being an 11 year old girl is much cuter and more influential (with politicians) than being a 15 year old girl. Timing is Everything.

When has someone taken your advice and benefitted from it?

58 thoughts on “Power of Suggestion”

    1. Ha! Thanks Steve… I love Bob Newhart. I was just thinking last night that I should try to find other sources for all the material on the LPs that I still have in the attic.

      I give lots of “how to find” advice. It must turn out well, because people keep coming back to me with their questions.

      The favorite advice I gave never got a chance to see action. I have a relative who has Alzheimers and is becoming more difficult to deal with. Last year she decided that she wouldn’t change her clothes; no one could figure out why and everyone had started to give up. The one thing that she really valued was going out to lunch with my mom every week so I thought we could use that as leverage. I told my mom to tell her that they needed to fill up the dog bowl w/ water before they left for lunch. The idea was to fill up a big bowl and then to “trip” and spill the whole bowl, drenching her completely. Then my mom could say “Quick, get changed so we can go out to lunch.” Everyone thought this was brilliant. Unfortunately for my career as advice-giver, the morning of the lunch, my relative got up and on her own changed her clothes. Rats. I could have been the next Dear Abby.

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  2. Acch! A slow day. I’ll pitch in to fill the vacuum. Just for the record, I have given a ton of rotten advice in my day, and most often people were wise enough to forget and forgive. But I can think of one time I didn’t mess it up.

    My daughter never was an unpleasant teenager, and we never had a significant disagreement in her teen years. Instead, when she was nine to twelve she became sulky with us (her parents) and all other authority. She never got unpleasantly confrontational, but she was truculent and uncooperative. Rather than fighting, she pouted and failed to engage with troublesome people.

    One day in junior high she came home to report her sociology class was awful. She didn’t understand the assignments or some of the readings. She felt victimized. Life wasn’t fair.

    I remember that conversation clearly. I told her, “Molly, for such a smart kid, I can’t believe how dumb you can be when it comes to getting along. Your teachers are dying to have a confused student approach them respectfully looking for help. If you give them a chance, they’ll turn themselves inside out for you. You can be SO good with people. Just use those skills with your teachers. Trust them. Give them a chance to be your friend.”

    I almost forgot that conversation, which was like many others we had had, but weeks later Molly came home glowing over her recent A in sociology. She and her teacher were now best friends. All the skills she had practiced to wrap Kathe and me around her finger were now at play in school. The back-of-the-room sourpuss burst out of her caterpillar body to stretch her wings as the teacher’s pet. And that set the pattern for the remarkable success she has had as a worker.

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    1. Excellent advice, Steve. Good thing Molly decided to listen to you that day. What is it about the teenage brain (or the adult brain for that matter) that says any admission of the need for assistance is a personal defeat? The teachers I have known are as you describe them – “… dying to have a confused student approach them respectfully looking for help.”

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      1. I think the teenage reluctance to ask for help has something to do with negative reaction that the teenager fears he or she will trigger in peers. No one wants to be viewed as sucking up to an adult, or be viewed by one’s peers as weak or stupid. My daughter has had both reactions from peers when she has asked for help from teachers.

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      2. About the time that Daughter was a toddler, there was a new edition released of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” (finally getting that poor mother into a pair of pants instead of that awful dress with the bow). The author of the series was asked why she never wrote a “What to Expect…” for the teenage years. Her reply: pick up your “What to Expect the Toddler Years” and replace “toddler” with “teenager.” I think some teenage defiance is a lot like the 2 or 3-year-old “I do it!” or “I do it myself!” – Same notions of finding a new and separate person-hood from the parents. (Now we’ll see if I can remember this information in a few years when Daughter hits the teen years.)

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    2. I wonder, Renee, about the influence of mass media, especially TV and movies. When I was a teenager it was possible for kids to have contempt for individual teachers (or other authority figures), but they weren’t seen as fools and bullies the way they have been depicted by so much mass media more recently. In a movie like “Ferris Beuhler” ALL adults are buffoons, for it suits the purposes of some folks who sell stuff to teens to play up the divide between them and the hopelessly clueless adults in their world. I can’t bear to watch movies that cynically portray parents and teachers as utterly predictable dolts who are not much more than plot devices put in a movie so the kids can look smarter and more in control of their emotions.

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  5. I’m so bad at advice giving. People know this and they avoid me. Usually. The year my son graduated from law school, he called depressed and distressed because he wasn’t finding a job. He was even sniffling. I had no idea what to say other than the usual … we’re in a recession – jobs are scarce for everyone, hang in there – it’ll happen … then out of my mouth came this passionate piece of nothingness, “Eric, you can give it your best and sometimes your best isn’t enough.” There was a long pause and then he replied, “You’re saying my best isn’t enough? Thanks for the glowing endorsement, Mom.” Then he started to laugh and I started to laugh and when he hung up, he was still jobless, but his heart was lighter. It all worked out in the end. He pitched himself to firms in NY and found one smart enough to hire him: http://www.avhlaw.com/firm.html

    I’m off to the land with no internet (IA). I’ll catch up later. Hope you kids all have a great weekend!

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  6. Good morning to all,

    I did crop consulting for a while and was paid to give advice on crop manafement. My advice to my customers was followed at least part of the time since they were paying for it. Advice given to family members and others who aren’t paying for it is often ignored and I guess I am not good at following advice from those same people. We are all such smart people that we don’t need any advice, or that is what we seem to think. Once in a while people that don’t know me very well follow my advice. I guess these people who don’t know me very well somehow think that I might be a source of good advice. It is often said than an expert is a person who is more than 100 miles away from home or something like that.

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  7. Well, although clients do best when they come up with their own solutions, I end up giving lots of advice to people for a living, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. My husband has very poor visual-spatial and mechanical skills and it drives him crazy when he tries and tries to do something requiring those skills and he can’t and he works on it for hours and I come along and suggest trying something and it works. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and give him the opportunity to solve those sorts of problems but it is painful to see him struggle. On the other hand, he is a far better writer than I am, and I certainly wouldn’t want him to tell me how to write.

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  8. I am in bad flair-up, so please forgive any typos etc. I know your advice is to ignore such errors. Well, ha! to your advice!

    My parents would not give advice. Their answer to anything was “That’s your decision.” “What should I be when I grow up?” “That’s not for me to to say. What if I give you bad advice.”

    My ninth grade counselor, the grade at which we were supposed to think seriously about our future, was a man named Lute Olson. Yes, that Lute Olson, for those who know. He told my girl friend that she was unfit for college; that she should become a secretary. She now has a doctorate. He told me I should find a job in which I did not work with people. He stressed that. That I was not as smart as I thought I was. I did not know I thought I was smart. Any way, he handed out advice left and right that was maybe right at the moment (I was famously quiet, which some thought meant I was shy. Mostly I was not like my very gregarious very successful sister, who Lute liked.) Dear Lute, I did end up a teacher thereby working with people. How well is an open question, Lute. But that’s what I did. I am amazed at how many of my students are now in the word/writing/design business. I think that is not from me but from how the world of work changed.

    I decided there was a method somewhere between no advice and bad advice. Then I discovered Rogerian Counseling, which I learned well. It served me very well as a teacher. When students asked for advice, I would lead them to their decision, every so often I would suggest to maybe rethink it. I would often dream kill. A star-struck girl who could not act or sing but by default got the lead in South Pacific. I told her she really had no talent and not to plan a future on Broadway. The boy who flunked every class who was going to get a doctorate, from a technical college. But I did encourage dreams most of the time, and often pushed the best kids to dream bigger. Gifted kids are often unsure of the breadth of their talents.

    My own two kids to this day use me as a Rogerian wall. They have never openly asked me for advice on anything. My wife hands it out all the time, which they readily ignore. My kids call us up and start telling a problem or a decision to be made. My wife soothes and tells them what to do. We both ignore her and I bounce back at them.

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    2. are we supposed to ignore that or bounce it back to you?
      late start today.
      i am great at solving other peoples problems. i have ideas and opinions about most everything. i am not likely to reserve opinion at the fear of being disruptive or over the top. i have fun in my interpersonal relationships and tell people that with my advice you need to be very prepared to bail. i have nmanu=y ideas and lots of them are bad. i never know which is which until they get under way. once you get going there is a set of challanges that present themselves and how you deal with these tells you what and wher you go next. if you want easy no hassle stuff there are options for that but the payoff usually is minimal. the reason the rewarding stuff is rewarding is because it took some doing to get it done. if it were easy everyone would have done it.
      my kids get advice on a custom tailored basis. they are all so different that the methodology for one wotld not be the right way to deal with the others. i am a chameleon at philosophy presentation and can do a little song and dance until i get through. this is good in business and when i work with companies to get them to tweek their way of doing things i am a genius, when i talk to my family and friends it is a bit of a different story, an expert is someone form more tha 500 miles away isn’t it?
      i have helped companies and people get on to new approaches that have worked out well. i have given advice that comes back to whack me in the head later so my advice to you is watch out what advice you listen to. but give it a try. some of the best stuff sounds like unfathomable stuff to begin but turns out magically.
      i laugh about the year i looked back to my last years christmas card to see if my then 14 or 15 uyear old had been this big a jerk las tyear and i had to laugh when i rea my entry about how i was up on a pedistal in his view. that i cluld dl no wrong, well one year later i was the dumbesst thing on the planet. time is vital. if it didn’t take the first time that doesn;t mean it was wrong it could have been wrong for the time.
      i will check back after the sarturday glory out there in the yard.
      nice to have dae stick his head in. just like old times.
      guest blog will be a comin.

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    3. Or maybe there could be blog posts only 3-4 times a week. Then those of us who are slow thinkers would have time to respond to the post before it is old and people who are too busy to respond on any particular day can still get in on the fun the next day. (But we could still do guest blogs, too, of course.)

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    4. I will try to send Dale something soon. I think the topic I have in mind should be one I can write fairly quickly. I am a slow writer. It always takes longer than I think it will to write a guest blog offering. Dale’s ability to write a blog almost every day is amazing to me. With pactice I think I should be able to reduce the amount time I need to write a piece for the Trail…

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  10. In all honesty, I can’t recall ever giving anyone advice that they have heeded and that made a difference, one way or the other. I do recall telling Lizz Winstead, when I fired her from her receptionist position, that she was in the wrong line of work. She’d crack the most inappropriate jokes and make rather unprofessional comments to clients, and despite me having talked to her several times about it, she just couldn’t stop herself. As it turns out, that well developed sense of the outrageous has stood her in good stead in her career as a stand up comic. That she wasn’t cut out to work in an accounting office was obvious to me. I didn’t realize that she was actually talented enough to make a career of being funny, but I did give her the shove that prompted her to give it a try.

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      2. Thanks, but you are being (I fear) a little generous. It works to reinforce someone’s decision when that decision is sound. But when someone is making what seems like a big mistake, we can hardly be expected to encourage them in their folly. I was half-kidding when I implied that the point of giving advice was to get someone to accept it. Often, that just isn’t possible or appropriate.

        What can we do when someone is pursuing a foolish path? My experience says: “very little.” But if we are to intervene and help someone, I think the first step is to understand that person in depth to get a sense of what kind of advice or intervention has the best chance of working. Conservatives are naturally drawn to harsh, authoritarian interventions. Progressives are more likely to seek a way to be sympathetic and supportive while still trying to redirect the person who seems to be in error.

        My only strong conviction here is that the approach most likely to fail is to say what the other person already knows we think. When we are predictable, others tune us out. When trying to give my daughter advice, my central guideline was to never say just what she expected me to say. I wanted to be unpredictable and interesting, worth listening to. And since my one child turned out so well, as they say, I got to retire from parenting as a smug success!

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    2. often the best advice is from themselves. just talk enough to help them realize what they need to do. in sales if you get the other guy to give you his idea and then you feed it back to him and tell him what a stroke of genius he came up with it is hard for him to turn down his own advice.

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  11. Best Friend has been known to ask for advice, but I have learned unless I am telling her something along the lines of, “oh honey, that shirt/skirt/outfit is doing you no favors” the best thing to do is ask questions or make open-ended statements. Daughter occasionally follows my advice, but she deals better with options vs. being told “do this.”

    Follow tim’s advice – get outside today. It is lovely. (Off to plant my bulbs in mere moments…)

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  12. My Dad once said that if you want to get someone to do something you should let therm think that they were the one who came up with an idea that was actually your idea.

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  13. Afternoon gang.

    I try to steer people to making their own decisions rather than saying ‘You should–‘. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not real fond of all the people that come up to me and say “You know what you should do? You should–” Right, thanks; I’ll get right on that.

    It is a nice day here in SE MN… did a few things outside this morning including randomly trying to re-align our Wild Blue satellite dish. (We had the house shingled Tuesday so they had to take it down for that.) Now picture me futily calling Wild Blue for tech support and me talking to a machine. (OK, ‘Tech support does answer the phone, it’s trying to get someone actually to come out and fix it.) tim, what are the coordinates for the wildblue satellite from Rochester?

    Got a show to open in two weeks so it’s time to work weekends. “Little Mermaid”… Thank goodness for volunteer painters!

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    2. I have a “friend” like those people in your first paragraph. She used to say those exact words: “You know what you should do? You should…” No open-ended questions or listening carefully to what I am really saying for her, no sir. And yes, it annoys the snot out of me, enough so that I no longer tell her anything.

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    3. Ah…volunteer painters. i have many sets that would not have been completed without them. Bless each and every one of them, and their paint brushes.

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  14. An observation re parental advice to adult children: we have three couple friends who have one or more adult child at the age of 40 who have not got their act together. Start and stop, come back home, brief marriages, failed careers etc.
    When we have told various friends that our daughter is donating a kidney, everyone is concerned as you would expect. But those three couples and only they have told us to order her not to do it.
    Maybe coincidence, but I think not.
    Re our daughter: Tuesday she goes to Rochester for the full intense physical before the actual operation, which will be sometime soon. Sometime.

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    1. Good luck to your daughter, Clyde. That is such a generous gesture on her part. I know she has considered the risks involved, and has decided to go ahead anyway, what a courageous thing to do. It is her decision to make. I can imagine it is a decision that weighs heavily on you and your wife, but I applaud you for supporting her in carrying it out despite whatever concerns and misgivings you may have. Bless you all.

      I can’t even begin to imagine where those three couples get off thinking that you have any right to order an adult child to do anything.

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    2. Good Luck to her. I’m in Rochester so let me know if she needs anything. Surgery time as well for her or you guys.

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    3. blass your daughter. this is the preacher right ? and the couples want to tell the pastor what to do? ha. have them go tell their own pastor not to do what they have decided to do and to follow the advice of someone who knows best.

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      1. Yes, the pastor.
        My wife has handled the calls about this and she just says no, it’s her decision.
        One of my friends from HS managed his first child’s life completely, but that son was his father’s child, pointing in the same direction as his father. The second child taught them lots of lessons, ended up a rock drummer and videographer when such things were new and ended up saving his father’s company. That father now has dedicated the rest of his weird life to the tea party.

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  15. Steve — I wanted you to know that I completely lifted your advice today and repeated it, almost verbatim to the teenager. She’s struggling in Calculas and of course thinks that asking the teacher for help is the last possible thing on the planet to be done. We’ll see if she’s as smart as your daughter at taking your advice!

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    1. Well, that got my attention, B-A! i’m pretty sure these were “market goats” – meat goats. the ractopamine would cause higher meat yield, less fat, in an animal grown for market. not anything that a dairy goat would consider doping. but maybe a mammoplasty might be in order – you know – a little tuck here and there, a little silicon here and there. take away that little pocket in the foreudder, make the teats more plumb. there are goat plastic surgeons, right??? anything for that prize. ha, ha!
      in the dairy world, the long neck, straight topline, and nice udder and strong feet are what win prizes. not meaty loins and legs.
      thanks for that!

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  18. The only person I can recall having taken my advice is my mother, recently. She is more forgetful and unsure about her decision making ability this past year, and is in a new environment on top of that. She will do anything I say, which is sort of scary. I need to be a bit slower and more thoughtful when I advise her, because she’ll do it!

    OT: I’m in Iowa one last time for H.S. Reunion. Will enjoy listening to clips and reading most of this at home. Have a good Sunday, Babooners.

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  19. WOT – Just returned from the Farmers’ Market with eggplant, zucchini and a large bunch of basil. Add to that my own bounty of tomatoes and the fresh Mozzarella I bought yesterday, I’m all set for this evening’s dinner. With some crusty bread, a grilled chicken breast and a nice glass of wine, we/re good to go. Have a great Sunday, Baboons.

    Zucchini-Eggplant Napoleons with Tomato, Basil, and Mozzarella
    Serves 6
    1 medium eggplant, cut into 12 rounds
    2 medium-large zucchini, sliced medium thick on the diagonal
    1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
    Salt and ground black pepper
    1 large tomato, cut into 6 slices and lightly salted
    1 ball fresh mozzarella (8 ounces) cut into 6 slices (you will only need about 6 ounces)
    Small handful basil leaves
    2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
    Heat a gas grill igniting all burners on high for at least 10 minutes or build a hot charcoal fire. Clean grate with a wire brush and then lubricate with an oil-soaked rag. Toss eggplant and zucchini slices with 3 tablespoons of the olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.
    Place eggplant and zucchini on hot grate and grill, covered until spotty brown on one side, about 5 minutes. Turn vegetables and continue to grill, covered, until vegetables are spotty brown on remaining side, 4 to 5 minutes longer.
    As soon as vegetables come off the grill, assemble napoleons in the following order: 1 slice eggplant, 2 to 3 slices of zucchini, 1 slice mozzarella, a few basil leaves, a tomato slice, another eggplant slice and a few more zucchini slices. Lightly drizzle napoleons with remaining tablespoon of olive oil and the balsamic vinegar. Serve.

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