I’ve found that the more frequently and passionately I talk about what’s important to me—including my missteps and what I’ve learned through them— the more positively my team responds. I’ll get notes from people saying, “I care about that too. How can I help?” I’ll hear others reinforcing the same messages and supporting each other to change their behavior. And even when people disagree with me, the act of discussing it openly sheds light on the topic for everyone.

If we’re trying to persuade a skeptical audience to believe a new message, the reality is that we’re fighting an uphill battle against a lifetime of personal learning and social relationships. It would seem that there’s nothing much we can do to affect what people believe. But if we’re skeptical about our ability to affect belief, we merely have to look at naturally sticky ideas, because some of them persuade us to believe some pretty incredible things.

Rather, the goal of making messages “emotional” is to make people care. Feelings inspire people to act.

The most basic way to make people care is to form an association between something they don’t yet care about and something they do care about.

So far we’ve looked at three strategies for making people care: using associations (or avoiding associations, as the case may be), appealing to self-interest, and appealing to identity. All three strategies can be effective, but we’ve got to watch out for our old nemesis, the Curse of Knowledge, which can interfere with our ability to implement them.