Most people, when you give them a positive label, will doing anything to maintain that label.

0:00When someone owed me money, here's what I did to get him to pay. For 2 years, this friend was known as the guy who never paid his bills. What I did differently from the guys who had asked and basically threatened him and called him names and said bunch of mean things to him was that rather than saying, "Hey, I think you're terrible. You're such a dishonest and terrible friend." When I wanted to collect the money, I just said, "Hey man, I just want you to know I'm not going to try and ask you to collect the money. I know that you're an honest person and that you'll never do me wrong. So, I know you're good for it." The next day he came and paid in full all of the money that he owed. And the difference was a psychological feature called labeling. Everybody before this was labeling him as all these negative things. And so, he was living up to that new negative label.

0:35They were saying he was dishonest. They were saying he was a scumbag, whatever it was. And so, instead I painted a positive picture and said, "Hey, I see you as all these positive things. I hope that you act in accordance with that." And most people when you give them a positive label will do everything they can and overemphasize character traits that are not normally present in themselves to maintain a positive label in someone else's eyes.