Wrap Up, Tease & Rant.

So here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to wrap up Part 1 of my series on Influence this week – next week we’ll break to discuss something else, and give you time to process this weeks ramblings (I’ve already had 4 people mailing me telling me of their brain-melt at the concept of always being in an altered state). So to wrap this up I’ll give you a hint of where I’m taking this and a little peep at where this will end up. I’m probably giving too much away at this point – for many of you at least – but it will get you hooked and give you time to get your heads around it all. You’ll thank me for it.

In a number of ways, learning communication, NLP, hypnosis etc, is a lot like learning maths or physics. The main difference, however, is that once people have studied maths at school and thrown their books away upon leaving, they don’t tell their friends 20 years later that they’ve been studying maths for the last 2 decades.

This is something you find in hypnosis and NLP far far too often. Somebody attends a training in 1999, spends their time doing the same old swish patterns/visual squashes/reframes/anchoring afterwards. They don’t continue their training in any way, barely look at an NLP book, most importantly they never think about experimenting or getting creative – never get anywhere near exploring the limits of NLP… And still they tell you they’ve been practicing for 10 years. Give me a break.

Sorry. Rant over.

Anyhoo, the similarities between studying NLP and maths/physics etc, (And Martial Arts now that I think of it) is that when you first start out you learn a load of laws, formulas and equations (Excuse the over simplification) and you pass your exam. You then move on to a more advanced level of study, and you’re basically told “All the stuff you learned? Well… It’s correct. Kinda. But really, it’s more like this…” and then they take you to a whole new world of discovery. It’s not that you’ve been lied to – just that you’ve been given a “Broad brushstroke” description that will match you level of understanding and prepare you for the more advanced work.

Later, if you have the kind of patience and mind to do so, you go even further. Again you’re told “All that stuff you’ve been doing? It’s all well and good – and it’s definitely not wrong… but it’s really more like this…”  And away you go again.

And if you’ve been studying physics, someone then comes along with Quantum Theory and turns your entire reality on it’s head. “Non-locality of information” indeed.

So NLP, trance and persuasion is the same – and this is why those guys who studied NLP and have yet to get around to leaving the classroom bug me so. Just about anyone who has studied sales or interview techniques has had exposure to NLP concepts like “Rapport”, “Mirroring and Pacing” etc. In a nutshell, if you match someone’s postures, gestures, speech patterns etc, you will achieve a level of familiarity with the person you’re trying to sell to. They will find themselves liking you and more willing to spend money with you/believe you.

This is correct. Kinda. But really, it’s more like… well more like what we’ve got coming up.

Used properly, a basic skill level (Or “Horse shit NLP” as Tom Vizzini calls it) will work fine for you. It’s an important foundation, and for those of you with no idea about conversational hypnosis, influence etc, you need to have a good handle on those base skills before moving on to the real stuff. So that’s what we’re going to do: We’ll steam through the horse shit NLP (And maybe clean some of it up along the way) and get to the interesting, cool, fun and useful technique. The end goal?  This is the bit you’ll need to chew on…

If there’s no such thing as a “baseline” level of consciousness, by definition we’re always in an altered state. Or to put it more succinctly, trance. We spend our lives travelling from one trance to another – a TV trance, a reading trance, a shopping trance, an “I can’t believe I’m having this argument with my boyfriend again” trance… and so on.

What if you knew how someone “did” their various trances? How about if you, armed with that knowledge, could lead them into their fascinated trance, their shopping trance, or their trust trance? Or what if you could visit someone in their trance and lead them into yours? How useful would that be to someone looking for change, or aiming to influence?  Oh yes.

Just asking yourself those questions, and developing a deeper understanding of trance as a continuous everyday phenomenon puts you ahead of 99% of the so-called “experts” that your company inflicts upon you for your sales/negotiation/interview skills training.

I’m going to recommend Monsters & Magical Sticks again, especially if you work with kids or if you’re a parent. You would be shocked at the hypnotic commands you’re using every day – and to great effect I may add. There’s a reason why it’s required reading for all of my students.

Oh, I haven’t forgotten about Napoleon! That’s coming up next – and monday will be your chance to get your hands on an amazing hypnotic resource. I mean genuinely life changing. New Year coming up, this would be the perfect tool to help turn 2010 into the most successful year of your life!

Moving on…

PS – You need to check out Tom Vizzini’s site. That guy is a god!

PPS – What I said earlier about NLP practitioners who are “trapped in the classroom” – this doesn’t make them any less qualified as therapists, they may be very capable. It just means they’re boring and missing out. And lazy.

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You Think You Know… Didn’t You?

Most of the fear that’s out there related to achieving – or creating – trance is largely due to a misunderstanding of what trance actually is. Like this one: “Enchantment: a psychological state induced by (or as if induced by) a magical incantation”. Alrighty then. Let me give you some of the “symptoms” of trance, followed by some real world examples so you can begin to recognise trance in everyday life. I’ll keep it as “plain english” and real world as I can. Hypnotists, you may feel the need to try to correct some of my terminology here. Don’t waste your time, this isn’t for you to understand. It’s for them.

Some symptoms of trance (For those observing as well as those experiencing) include: Relaxation of facial muscles. Changes in breathing pattern and lividity. Time distortion (A minute feels like an hour, an hour goes by in the blink of an eye, that kind of thing). Hallucinating objects. Becoming blind to objects. Glazing over/defocussing of the eyes, an intense focus on a fixed point at the exclusion of external stimuli…  This is just a short list of the real obvious symptoms.

So let me ask you… Have you ever driven a long distance along familiar roads, negotiated junctions and traffic and arrived at home in what felt like an instant, and with no real memory of the drive? Have you ever not been able to find something, only for someone else to come along and point it out to you – right under your nose? Have you ever noticed those people who walk through busy malls, totally oblivious to everyone else and looking at all the pretty things in the windows? Have you ever been one of those people (Be honest now!)? Have you ever been chatting with a friend for a few minutes but looked at your watch to discover it’s been substantially longer?

Have you ever noticed friends chatting and mimicking each others actions, postures etc? Have you ever listened to a song that’s made you sad or happy? Have you ever listened to a piece of music that’s evoked strong memories of past times – a holiday, your childhood, office party, etc? Is there something that you admit is trivial but tends to make you react in an overly emotional manner? Do you meditate? Do you pray? Is there someone who knows how to “push your buttons” – or someone that leaves you feeling “How do they always do that do me?” (Whatever “that” may be)? Have you ever been “lost” in a good book? Do you get engrossed in soap operas, your favourite TV show or movie, getting angry at the bad guys, tearful at the sad parts, squirming at the embarrassing parts? Do you jump during horror movies?

Have you ever daydreamed? Have you ever been in an argument and it’s escalated “out of control”? Have you ever been walking down a street and come close to attracting a friends attention only to realise at the last second it’s someone you don’t actually know – and in fact bares little resemblance to your friend? Do you feel an emotional reaction to the name Tiger Woods right now? Have you ever bought something, and walked out the store thinking “What was I thinking buying this?!” Following an emotional experience, do you ever find yourself going back over the incident in your mind wishing you’d said or done things differently? Do you hear/see the “revised” incident? Does the memory evoke feelings in you all over again? Has someone you know said hello to you and your first response was “Where the hell did you come from?”

I need to stop now – this could go on a long while!

As I said at the end of the the previous part in this series, trance is an altered state. This would suggest there’s a “baseline” state to alter from. But is there? I’ve yet to find one. Maybe you should give it some thought, some deep contemplation. Imagine what that baseline would feel like, or try to think back and remember a time when you were in that baseline state. And if you can do any of that without achieving a trance state, I’ll be most interested to hear how you did it!

So if trance is an altered state, the question is “Altered from what, exactly?”

With more of an understanding of trance – or at least an appreciation that you should question what you previously knew about trance, and that’s just as good – we can start to move on to how we can use trance to communicate effectively and efficiently. This is where the real skill, imagination and artistry is involved. It’s no big deal to induce a trance (Whatever that means) – it’s what you do with it that counts. It’s in trance where real personal development happens, where change can take place – the change you really want.  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back tomorrow.

Moving on…

PS – I’m setting up a Full Contact Reading page for the UK this week. Please hang in there! Meantime, I need to recommend this book again – it’s just that good.

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Anyone For Trance?

Let me clear somethings up and give you a big bad something to think about… When we talk about hypnosis, (and we are talking about hypnosis right now), there’s a few things to consider.

Firstly, there is much common ground between what many people see on a stage, what goes on in a clinicians office, and what we Jedi like to get up to in the real world (Or “The Playground” as I like to think of it!). That said, there are far many more differences. Some are more subtle than others, but any one of those differences can make all the difference. With that in mind, it’s sometimes difficult to get past the huge weight of misconception around hypnosis. Stage hypnosis, for example, is largely play acting. Yes, the subjects are in an “altered state”, just not in the way people outside the hypnosis fraternity understand.

The point is, you can’t use one area of hypnosis to accurately describe the other. In one discussion I had with someone convinced that hypnosis is “evil” and “immoral”, an example they used was “How about when Derren Brown hypnotised people so he could pay for things in their shop with blank paper?” Yes, this person was a grown adult – eligible to vote and father children. And yes, he was referring to Derren Brown the TV magician, mentalist and entertainer. And artist, author, historian, and all round good egg. This is like saying “Of course people can defy gravity. What about that guy I saw on TV the other night? You know… Superman?”

One of the first comments I get when people are contemplating using hypnosis for therapeutic reasons – and this is now a cause of some annoyance for me now! – is “I couldn’t be hypnotised. You’d probably make me cluck like a chicken, or something!”. Like this is what a serious mental healthcare professional is likely to do to a client who has come to them in distress.

But where those kinds of comments annoy me, it’s understandable that clients feel like that. There’s a lot of mystery, misdirection and misinformation surrounding hypnosis. Their only exposure is via the stage at their local comedy club or TV. This lack of knowledge also leads to a suspicion that hypnosis could be the miracle cure they’ve been looking for, and this can make many people nervous and resistant. A lifelong phobia or habit can actually provide a certain degree of comfort and security – if this guy can take it away in just 45 minutes (And a skilled therapist can), he can also take away a lot of excuses. That phobia/neuroses can also take up a lot of space in the psyche – once it’s gone, what will replace it? What will the client be able to lean on?

But – and here’s the important bit, the trailer for tomorrow’s post! – the one common thread between stage, street and clinic is… trance. Whether all 3 areas involve hypnosis is questionable (In fact the very existence of hypnosis is a cause for debate). That they all involve trance  - or an altered state of consciousness – is not.

In fact I’ll go one further. This isn’t a theory I invented, but it’s definitely one I support. Not only does stage hypnosis, covert hypnosis and therapeutic hypnosis all involve trance, everything you do involves a trance of one kind or another. Just in case that hasn’t fried your brain, let me clarify: You are always in a trance.

Keep that in mind. And I’ll be back tomorrow.

PS – Make no mistake, I recommend the use of hypnosis, and self-hypnosis (Some would call it meditation) to everyone. Therapeutic benefits aside, it’s safe and feels amazing! If you would like to have a go in the privacy of your own home, This book has a great CD attached – I use it all the time, just for the trance!

For more information on the bomb I dropped at the end of the post above, in my opinion the most important book written on hypnosis by far is Monsters & Magical Sticks. It’s easy to read, funny, and will make you question everything you think you know about hypnosis, trance, and communication (Especially how you talk to your kids!)

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What the…? 30 Nov 2009

The first in a weekly series (barring temporary amnesia and extreme busyness!) giving you a short summary of what’s exerting an influence on my universe at this time. If it’s on one of these lists, it’s either educational, enlightening, or it just makes me smile a lot.  All of which come under the heading of personal development or self help. Feel free to use my What the…? lists to dive into something different or to find a new and exciting diversion in life.  We all need those, right?  So lets do this…

I’m reading:  Richard Bandler’s Guide to Trance Formation

I’m listening to:  Standing on The Verge of Getting It On by Funkadelic

I’m watching:  The Mighty Boosh

I’ve visited: OG Trance. For a long while I was often called upon to help men become more successful in romance. I became disillusioned with this “community” because of the sheer weight of BS that you have to wade through in order to find something useful, or someone with sincere intentions. Every time I met one of the pioneers of the community, or came across one of the legendary “pick up artists” or hypnotists, I have come away distinctly unimpressed. Their skills for marketing and coasting on an inflated reputation turned out to be considerably greater than their skills with the opposite sex or for wielding a trance. There’s only two guys I’ve met who have genuine skill, actually “get it” and who truly understand what it takes to be successful – and unfortunately only ONE of those individuals is also a cool guy who I would still want to associate with. That’s OG, and the above link is to his excellent blog. Visit!

Don’t forget the Facebook Group and Twitter! Get connected!

Stay tuned for big changes in 2010!

Moving on…

self help

Somebody Order a Rocked World?

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.

What, no preamble?  Not today. This stuff is too big and too important. I promised something to rock your world and here it is. I’m even going to say it again:

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.

Don’t like your job? Change it. Don’t like your town? Move. Stuck in an abusive, negative, destructive relationship?  You get the idea. As “world rocking” as this idea may be, it’s also kind of obvious. As obvious as it is terrifying, so don’t feel you have to actually do anything with this knowledge just yet. I just want you to think about it and come to terms with it. But don’t just write it off as “impossible” (It’s not) or “Duh! I knew this already!” (That’s as maybe. But why aren’t you doing it?  Of course, if you are doing it, congratulations! Now move along… nothing for you to see here.)

“But wait…” I can hear your inner voice (You know which one. The weak, nasal, whining one.) wail from the abyss “I can’t change my job just like that. I’m too old. I have responsibilities, bills, kids, asthma, a bald spot…” The list goes on. And on. Let’s get one thing clear right now.  Just about all the reasons your mind can throw at you to make you avoid change are bullshit. It’s just been convenient and safe for you to choose to believe in them until now. And look where it’s got you.

But even the tiny percentage of genuine obstacles that may be in your way can be overcome (Unless you don’t want to, that is). At this point I could list dozens of inspirational people who have overcome their doubts and fears to stop doing the things they don’t want to do, if I really wanted to convince you and prove my point… But I’m not going to. Deep down, if you’re honest with yourself, if you quiet that weak voice of terror inside you for just a moment, you know you don’t need convincing. You know I’m right.

One more thing I’m going to make clear, if only to completely shut that whiney inner voice up (Which should be panicking about now), is that this isn’t about being reckless. (Although that can be fun, in the right circumstances). It’s great if you can make a change “just like that”, but it’s not always possible. And that’s perfectly fine. You can still make a change and you still don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Not really. If you can just pack a bag and leave, that’s great. If you need to plan, research, save a little, sell a lot, pack a few bags and then leave… the end result is the same. A happy you, making a positive difference in your life… and doing nothing but the things you want to do.

Here’s an exercise, nice and simple, nice and safe, so you can come to grips with this. Try on this radical new mindset, see how it fits: Spend a whole day (or feel free to make it Point Blank if it would work better for you, and try this for maybe 10 mins), thinking about what you would/could do if you had the freedom to only do what you want to do. Who would spend time with? Where would you live? What would you do to generate income? Where would you work?

View all your decisions, if only hypothetically for a brief moment, as though your only consideration was “Do I want to do this Would this make me happy?”

Again, don’t do anything with these ideas just yet. Take away that pressure right now. Just think and reflect, honestly and with an open mind.

Get used to the idea that your prison walls are of your own making, and are surprisingly flimsy.

But hey, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. That includes changing.

More to come…

 

 

More to come…