Session #117: Jorgen Rasmussen on Provacative Hypnosis

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 117, Jurgen Remin on Provocative Hypnosis. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Before I jump into the content here, I share with you a little bit of a business strategy for those of you that are out there giving presentations, giving talks on hypnosis out there in your community.

Chances are if you’re doing a halfway decent job, somewhere throughout the process, people are going to say to. Wow, that was fantastic. That was a great presentation. They really enjoyed what you did for them, and that is the point where you should harness that as an opportunity. And then ask that individual who is then praising you.

Uh, who else do you know that would benefit from this presentation? The same as, as your client is raving about how wonderful their changes are. Hey, who else do you know that would benefit from the service? And for you stage hypnotist out there, it’s the same thing as you’ve done that program. And again, assuming you’ve done a good presentation, you’ve done an entertaining program.

When they are just loving everything that you’ve did, that’s when you should pivot and ask the polite question. You know, give ’em a thanks. Thank you. Who else do you know that would benefit from this program? This is how, uh, when I was a full-time stage hypnotist, I worked with so many schools that as they were raving, as they were applauding, I would actually say, Hey, what other student councils do you think would benefit from a fundraiser like this?

What other after grad events do you know of in the area that would also benefit from this program? In a very odd way of, uh, segueing into the content here is that, uh, over the years as I’ve done this program now 117 times, maybe slightly more thanks to, uh, or not, thanks to some failed recordings that I still need to do those interviews again.

Uh, there’s a name that’s popped up a couple of times from some of my students, from fellow instructors saying, You need to have this person on your program. You need to talk to them. And that’s where Jurgen Remin comes into the story that I’ve only known of him in passing, and I share with you now my passion of doing this program.

Yes, it’s wonderful to do the program and basically have a conversation with my friends and capture it for your education, entertainment, edification, whatever categories you wanna put it into. Moments where a couple of weeks back, I did the session with Chris Thompson and we go back a couple of years now and it was the opportunity to finally record hanging out after the Hypno Expo and saying to Scott Sandler, let’s stop this conversation and let’s do it as a podcast.

As much as I enjoy doing that, my favorite recordings that I’ve done of this series have been the ones where we are capturing the very first conversation live and then airing it as the podcast session. And Jurgen has a bit of a reputation in terms of his style of work and even simply look. Uh, the back cover of who else has recommended his two highly excellent books.

You start to see this, uh, this sort of trend in terms of this is gonna be a little bit different than what I expect. This is gonna be a little different than what I learn everywhere else. I would highly, highly, highly encourage you. Head over to provocative hypnosis.com and check out his two books. He’s got a book, uh, Provocative Hypnosis as well as Provocative Suggestions.

And then there are some phenomenal videos, and this is gonna be a conversation as you listen to this, there’s gonna be some stories that are going to stick with you. There are going to be some themes that may challenge your expectations in terms of how you work with your clients and how you interact, uh, within the hypnotic profession and what exactly it is, as I would often say, to either do hypnosis or to simply.

Be hypnotic. So again, head over to provocative hypnosis.com and check out his two books, Provocative Hypnosis, Provocative Suggestions, and uh, I’ll put a couple of the videos over in the show notes over at Work Smart Hypnosis. This is one that you’re going to remember. I know it’s one that I’m going to listen to myself, uh, several times.

So let’s jump right in. This is session number 117, Jurgen Remin on Provocative Hypnosis. You know, just for the listener in, in Case my voice cracks. It’s not puberty, it’s, it’s actually just the, the final phase of a cold. So, uh, so, so there you go. Uh, my, you know what got me into this, I think is just share c.

I’ve, I’ve always been very curious and psychologically oriented, you know, from a very young age, I started meditating and, uh, studying philosophy at age 13. So I’ve always had that, that psychological, philosophical bent. And if, if you combine curiosity with, uh, with a, a psychological orientation and a solid dose of pragmatism, I think, uh, ending up studying what I’ve studied and, and, and done what I’ve done has been more or less, uh, you know, inviable.

That theme of curiosity is one that consistently pops up here. Yes. We can talk about back to the origins of NLP and the wanton curiosity. What is it about that curiosity that you feel makes it a more effective process of helping that. . Well, I, I, I think, uh, I, I think for me, you know, the, the, the reason I didn’t, you know, give you a, a, a bunch of life events mm-hmm.

is that I’m, I’m, I’m more oriented in, in, in terms of internal experience. Yes. So, so, uh, the combination of, of curiosity and, and, and, and, and a sense of playfulness and out outrageousness and, and, and just the sheer pragmatism, you know, the, the willingness to experiment, the willingness to test things, really wanting to figure out, you know, how stuff works.

You know, can we do this? Is, is this possible? Uh, I, I remember in, in, in the early days, I, I started out reading a lot of the mil ericks and literature, you know, pretty much everything that’s been, been written by him and, and, and about him. And I studied Bandler and Grindr’s work and, and, uh, I, I, of course read about the Impossibles practice and, uh, the idea popped into my mind, you know, is, is this stuff possible?

Is, is the stuff that they’re doing with hypnosis, You know, man, this is, this is way cool. Is, is this bs? Is it real? Mm-hmm. , is it possible? So I, I just started playing and just started experimenting and, uh, went to courses, you know, got some certifications. I don’t really put a lot of stock in certifications and, and, and, and titles, but, but I got some of those and I just started putting ads in the paper, uh, of, you know, no change, no pay, and, uh, trolling for, you know, in quotation marks, Impossible clients.

And, uh, It’s, it’s, it’s a great way to go broke, of course. Uh, especially initially, but I had so much fun doing it. I learned so much. Uh, and it turned into a career. And, and here 20 years later, you know, here we are essentially doing not the same stuff, but moving in the same direction, so to speak. I love the aspect of just the jumping in with the, uh, no change, no pay of, you know, where my side of it was.

Uh, slightly of a business orientation of going, Okay, so I’ve just signed the big scary lease I have to make this work. Um, it’s that place of, you know, anyone with kids, the experience of trying to get them out of a swimming pool. Uh, the experience of working with somebody and being fully invested in that change.

Is there a story that comes to mind of the early years of, uh, kind of positioning yourself in that format and working with somebody? Of, of being really invested in the change. Yeah. I mean, of just a, a client experience from those early years, I’ll, I’ll give you a very personal experience that that just spontaneously, uh, came up to mind.

And, and anyone who has read my, my first provocative, I will probably, uh, remember it where I, I wrote about a, a woman, I call her a friend in my book, but it’s actually the woman who turned out to become my wife. Uh, but, but at the time we were, we, we were dating and, uh, she was supposed to pick me up one evening and, uh, and she had a horrible car accident and ended up in a, a coma for, for six weeks and, you know, went through recovery.

And, uh, you know, and for a while she, she had this, this delusional idea that she was dead. So, so friends would visit her, visit her, and I would visit her and, and, and she, she, she would say that she was dead and, and, you know, she wouldn’t eat. And, you know, she wouldn’t do a bunch of stuff and, and people would, would attempt to, uh, to persuade her out of it, uh, you know, at no luck.

And, and I started thinking, you know, if, if this doesn’t somehow change, of course this, this wasn’t a client, there was no formal agreements of, of, of me attempting to do anything. Uh, and, and this was really early in my change career, you know, maybe, maybe a year into it or something. But I, I, I had this fear that if, you know, if, if she doesn’t pop out of this, this delusional idea, you know, uh, psychiatry might, might become involved.

And that’s very seldom a, uh, a good idea or a good outcome. So, uh, I, I was reading, I think it was Transformations, the old, uh, uh, Grinder and Bandler hypnosis book. And, uh, I, I just have this spontaneous flash idea of an insight when I read it, read something to the effect of, you know, change creates some sort of context, some sort of real life context where the change you’re looking for is likely to happen.

And, uh, I, I asked, you know, ma who, who, who’s now my wife, you know, I, I went to her and I said, You know what? I’m, I’m so sorry. Uh, I, I’m so sorry that I haven’t acknowledged that you’re dead until now. It’s just been too painful for me. And it was, you know, really rough, rough losing you. But, uh, I’m, I’m really sorry for, for not being able to face up to it.

And, and of course, huge. Uh, Uh, state of relief in her, you know, the, the, the first person who, who believed her and I, I, I completely entered into her reality, so to speak. Yeah. And, and, and once I was on board, and I could also see or hallucinate detect, you know, based upon, you know, how much you want to trust your own internal experience.

But it, it was pretty appearance to me that, that she really believed it as opposed to just acting a role, you know, because the, the relief was so, so obvious. Uh, and I told her, I said, Listen, you know, I, I’ve always wanted to kill someone, but obviously I, I can’t do it for, for moral and ethical reasons. But since you’re already dead, you know, maybe I could kill you just, just for the experience.

Might might feel just as real. And you, you would probably have to be in the room to, to, to just see how real this was and, and how. You know, comical. It, it, it was in . Yeah. In one sense because she, she looked at me completely congruently and, and, and said, Well, yes, you know, if, if it really means that much to you, uh, you know, Sure.

But by the way, b, before I proposed the killing, uh, I, I, I came up with this, this other scam. I, I told her, Look, I, I have this friend who works in, in, in the media, uh, in radio, and, uh, and he, he, he’s very curious about this woman who’s dead, but who still has friends and conversations and, and does exercise.

Uh, and, uh, it’s just mind blowing. And, and, and he, he wants to, to do this show. Uh, to explore how this works and, and , I’ll never forget the answer. She said, You will, you know, as long as he doesn’t, you know, attempt to make fun of me or, or as long as it’s a serious conversation, you know? Sure. And I remember going away thinking, you know, Jesus Christ, you know, she’s, she’s completely into that.

Because I would’ve thought, you know, if there was any faking or, or role playing, uh, or, or pretending in the conscious sense, Yeah, that could have been the out, She would probably have bailed out of that radio thing, But, but, but she didn’t. So, so then we arranged the killing and, and, and we even negotiated how it was supposed to kill her.

And, and we, we landed on a knife and. She was pretty concerned that it wasn’t supposed to be one of those cheap mics, you know? She, she wanted it to be kind of artistic and, and, and kind of cool. So I, I, I went to a friend of mine who’s a knife collector, and I got this really, you know, huge freaking knife that looks like it’s, it’s taken right out of, you know, Sylvester Stallone old movie Cobra.

You know, have you ever seen, I, I had it on the inside of my letter jacket and I went through the corridors of this, you know, rehabilitation hospital, which is called s uh, here in Norway. And, you know, went into the room, locked the door, and, and proceeded to, in quotation marks, you know, kill her. Um, And I’ve, I’ve worked as a professional self-defense instructors.

I’m, I’m very used to acting roles and, and stuff like that. And, and she kind of freaked out as soon as I, you know, put out the blade and, and put it to her neck. You know, she, she had a very visceral fear response. And, and I think it was the first time since the accident that, that she really, really felt something at a primal, deep, visceral level.

And, and she, she started, you know, pleading me not to do it. And I was like, Oh, why not? And she was, I, I’m scared. I was like, Of what? You’re dead. And, and she actually started to, to, uh, negotiate her way out of it. And, and I kind of fanned being disappointed that I, you know, couldn’t, couldn’t complete the killing.

And I left while she was in this state of confusion, not really knowing how she would make sense out of this experience. . So I came back the day after and I, I told her something that that was true, and that was that one of my dearest friends, Ronnie, uh, had been in a car accident. And, uh, and, uh, that was, you know, somehow traumatic.

And I, I, I said to her that afterwards he had this idea that he was dead. That wasn’t entirely accurate, but, but he had this idea that he was dead. Would you like to speak to him? And she said, yes. So I coached Ronnie a little bit, but he did a wonderful job just in terms of how to pace her reality a bit and, and, and used the kind of, you know, marked out words that she leaned on and stuff like that.

And, and he essentially pasted and deleted her out of the whole thing. We, we created this story of how he was convinced, and then he suddenly had this deep emotional experience and then he got confused. We, we essentially pasted back to her. All the responses and sentences that she had given me during that experience with a knife and a very elegantly, uh, talked her out of it.

And, and after that, that delusion was completely gone. And, and, and no one, no one understood anything like, like, how could that suddenly just vanish, disappear? So I, I, I haven’t thought about this in many, many years, but, but it, it just appeared as, as the first thing. This is back in 1999. This is quite a while ago.

I’ll, I’ll tell you something funny too. Throughout the years when, when, uh, you know, Ronnie and I told Mar my wife about this about six months later, and, and she totally cracked up and thought it was hysterically funny and, and was very happy and, and, Uh, profoundly happy that, that we cared enough and loved her enough that we were willing to go to that length to help her.

Like, like, like for her, it was a, that, that’s, that, that’s that caveat that I love inside of this, that again, they’d be thought of to the outside listener. Someone could be going, How cruel. And it’s where I definitely wanted to get to themes of Frank Farley here in a moment. Yeah, yeah. That, that’s why I’m mentioning it, because that, that was not her perception or her response at all.

It, it, it was, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m so honored that you guys cared enough that you would be willing to do something so unconventional to help me. Now here’s, here’s something really interesting throughout the years, as we have occasionally told this story, because it is a, a kind of love story and, and, and also a, a, um, a dramatic change.

I’ve noticed that regular people, Or usually moved by it by regular people. I just mean people who don’t work as part of psychology or psychiatry or, or aren’t part of that, you know, system are usually moved by the story. But, but the more education, and this isn’t always the case, but it’s, it’s more often the case, the not the more education people have in terms of medicine, psychiatry, sociology, uh, any health related field.

The, the more snippy and bitchy and, and politically correct. Uh, and, uh, you know, negatively, people automatically respond to this and, and, and they almost always automatically interpret the whole thing as you just suggested, that someone might do. How could you do this? How could you be so cruel? You know, have you no compassion.

So, uh, yeah, there, there’s a theme that I’m. And incredibly amused by which is that to work with the brand new student of all of this, the, the one who’s brand new. You know, if it’s a format, I’m in the Washington DC area. Um, and it’s a rather populated area, so I love the laughter I got on that statement,

But the experience that, uh, very often it’s a weekend format class. So we meet together these days and then they leave for a couple of weeks, then they come back again a few weeks later, and it’s the new student who my only phrasing can be, they don’t yet know enough to be afraid of it. , Right? They don’t yet know enough to be hyper cautious.

They don’t yet know enough and, and not to say to be out there doing harm, of course not, not to be out there putting people and working on things that, uh, there might be some other route that might be a more direct thing for them. Yet it’s where I, I had a previous student who, um, who sadly did pass away a few years ago, but he told the story of, Yeah, here’s a person who came into my office with this, or just a friend with this un unexplained medical condition.

And Christopher just looked at the client and said, Well, I don’t know what to do and neither do you. So everything on Web MD says that this is probably psychosomatic and something that your mind is inventing. So why don’t I just get you in hypnosis and read you the description from Web MD and it resolved the issue.

Now, yes, there’s. Fascinating, uh, mental concept that I first heard, uh, Tim Ferris, the guy behind Four Hour Work Week talk about of regression to the mean that, as he put it, we’re, when we’re at that place where things are at their absolute worst, we might be more willing to do some crazy things, uh, to try to resolve it.

And when it’s, it’s absolute worse, the bell curve might be there, that it’s already getting better. That being said, though, to be the one to facilitate that and break through that, uh, you know, I I, I’m assuming here, and again, we didn’t say this so far, but we said this before, we, uh, hit the red button here to start recording.

Uh, my favorite, uh, podcast recordings in this series are the ones that we are capturing our first conversation. And I, I have to obviously assume from the title of the book, uh, and from the story that, uh, provocative, uh, therapy by Frank Farley is a bit of a, an inspiration to you, something of an inspiration, but, but not as big really as, as many would assume, um, Meaning I, I read the book.

Yeah. Uh, but, but for example, the, the, the particular stunt I did here, I did a year before I read Provocative, uh, Therapy Yes. By Pelli. So yeah, I, I like the book. It’s, it’s a good book. Uh, but, but, but not really that influential on my thinking, uh, to, to be honest. I, interestingly enough, many years later, uh, I had the chance to watch some DVDs of, of Frank Elli work on stage, and I, I don’t know how similar or how different the sessions he did on stage are from.

The way he used to work in a, in a clinical setting, probably quite different. Mm-hmm. . But I, I remember thinking, Oh, that’s how he works. You know, I kind of misunderstood how, how he did it and being glad that I kind of misunderstood how he did it to, uh, to, to some extent my, if, if, if you’re looking at, um, provocation out outrageousness, using humor, that type of stuff.

Um, I, I’ve always had that bent kind of anyways, but, but I would say that, that my influences were more Erickson and, and Jay Haley. Um, you know, for anyone who’s listening there, there, there’s so much goldmines in, in the old Erickson books. Like if, if, if you look at a series like, uh, uh, the workshops, lectures and seminars of Milton Erickson, uh, or his book Hypnotherapy, which is an excellent case book, or some of Jay Haley’s work on, uh, on Ericsson, you know, on Common Therapy and, and Phoenix by David Gordon.

You know, these types of books which have a lot of, um, you know, outside of the office type interventions, behavioral interventions using paradoxes, using surprise. And a, a really interesting thing for me was when, when I first started doing this type of work, I didn’t really have any, any colleagues, uh, to speak of that I associated.

So I was kind of hearing Norway by myself, you know, doing this stuff, Uh, didn’t really know many people who did similar stuff that I regularly communicated with. So reading that literature and, and doing experiments, I got into the, uh, idea, which I discovered later was not correct, but I, I got the idea that, that this is how people work.

Mm-hmm. , that this is how people in the NLP and hypnosis world kind of work, that this is, this is how you do it. You know? And it was only later when I, when I started to, to, you know, get to know more people and collaborate more where people said, Why you did that? You, you, you do that type of stuff. And I would go, Yeah, don’t you?

And go, No, I just books. Like I, I kind of discovered that no, you know, most people do not actually work like that or, or, or, or do that type of stuff. But I, I, I have the notion that that’s. That’s how you do it. Well, it’s the beauty of those, those books that you go back and it, it’s the transcript rather than the script book.

Yes. It’s the story. It’s the experience and it’s where, you know, to, I, I, I’d often share a criticism of some trainings that you can go back to these videos and watch where, you know, in these experience, it may appear from the surface that they’re just telling stories. Yet there is a specific intention, you know, there’s a specific purpose inside of these interactions, and there are some who’ve tried to model that, and yet it, they’re just rambling.

They’re just telling stories for the sake of hearing their own. . Yeah. And there, there, there’s, there’s so many interesting, uh, there’s so many interesting instances, especially with Ericsson, I think of, of just learning to think strategically and, and learning to really observe human behavior. Uh, like, like one case that I read early that, that jumped out at me, you know, from what he did was, was this teenage girl who, who had this fixation on her feet and, and who just got convinced that her feet were way too big and she wouldn’t go to school and, you know, she wouldn’t be social and this and that and trans to something of a problem.

And, and her mother desperately asked Erickson, you know, Can you help my daughter straighten this out? You know, she’s 16 or 17 or, or whatever. And Ericsson said Yes and. Of course the, the, the girl, her, you know, herself were never in, you know, informed that any type of change work was supposed to happen. So, so Ericsson kind of thought, you know, how can I create a context and an experience for this person where they will likely make sense of it in such a way that she changes that particular, uh, orientation.

So she arranged for the mother to pretend to be sick or to have some sort of medical checkout, and Ericsson came to the house and he started kind of ordering the girl around to, to help him out with stuff and fetch stuff. And suddenly, you don’t know if you heard the story before, but, but suddenly he, you know, accidentally in quotation marks, you know, stepped on her foot.

hard enough so that it hurt and it got her attention. And she was like, ah, you know, . And he looked at her really intently knowing that he had her attention and she probably expected, you know, I, I’m so sorry, or something like that. And she said, If only you could, if only you could grow those large enough a man to see, you know, get outta here.

You know, that, that, that type of stuff. . And, and that was it, like, like that, that was the experience that, that helped her Correct. That type of crooked thinking. So, so I, I think there’s so much goldmines of information and, and, and in that old literature of, of, you know, not looking so much at language patterns, you know, yes, it’s valuable or scripts or reductions, but, but, but learning to really think strategically and, and to observe and, and to create contexts.

Where, where change is likely to happen. And we talk about, to be able to unpack an experience to leave behind a trail of replicatable techniques. And I, I’ll share with you the perception that I’m hearing here and I just wanna bounce it off of you. Um, and it’s one of the same perceptions that I got from going back to provocative, uh, therapy by fairly the, the mindset of, to step inside of the client’s trance.

Right. And by doing so, when someone else is there with them now, it isn’t as comfortable, it isn’t as organic of an experience anymore, that there was something very personal about that previous trance state they were stuck inside of. Uh, and then suddenly when someone else is there with them, it kind of snaps them out of it in some sense.

Yeah, yeah. You know, I, I, there’s some modifications of course to be had inside of that, but what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, they, they’re, they’re, they’re not that far off. I, I, I, I look at it many ways as if you wanna use the word trans, you know, it might be more or less useful to, to use. But, uh, I, I look at it as trans hijacking, you know, in, in some ways, in some ways kind of entering the experience and then helping the person modify it, uh, from the.

So I, I remember for example, you know, this, this, this client case comes up immediately of a woman I work with. Ones who I, I, I got this intuition. She came for a spider phobia. But, but, but I got this intuition after having spoken to someone she knew, uh, uh, former therapist and, and also her on the phone, that she was kind of using this as a manipulative employee, you know, in her relationship and wasn’t really so much about the spider.

So when she came into my office, you know, I said, You know, I have something for you here. And I kind of pretended to, and I, I saw no fear response, you know, whatsoever. And, uh, I, I started challenging her, you know, really, really challenging her and pushing her buttons. And, and, and she started, you know, she,

She looked at me and she said, uh, I’m so sorry about my boyfriend who has to go through this. And I said, Not really, otherwise you wouldn’t be doing this crap all the time, . And, and, and she looked at me to, to kind of make sure that she had my attention. And then she kind of collapsed down and she started sobbing, which for me was obviously like a pity cry.

Just, just another like tool. So I leaned back at my seat and I said, You know what? That, that doesn’t really impress me that much. And immediately she flew into rage, started cussing at me as, you know, how dare you and fuck you, You know, and that type of stuff. I just kind of leaned back and said, Nah, not that either.

And the funniest thing happened, you know, she stopped, sat up and smiled and just said, Okay, , . And after and after that, she was very, very responsive. It, it was just a matter of kind of entering her world and, and. Gaining that credibility and, and then being able to influence her to, to move in a different direction.

Whi which there’s again, I’m, I’m playing the, uh, two mindsets here of, on my side. I am fascinated, I am loving every bit of this. And for the listener out there, there’s sometimes the one going, Oh, I would never do that though. Let’s, let’s try to unpack it in some way to say that for the person who is new to hypnosis, uh, what is that skill?

What is that ability that really needs to be there in addition to the technique?

I, you know, I don’t know. I, uh, I started doing stuff like this pretty much right off the bat. Mm-hmm. . Um, I think one advantage, I mean, you know, every, everything comes with pros and cons. Yeah. Uh, but I think for the most part, agents of change really overestimate how fragile human beings. Uh, I, I, I think that, that that’s way, way, way, way exaggerated.

And, uh, sometimes people who have read my first book and, you know, uh, have come up to me and said, you know, uh, how can you be so cruel, uh, to, to your clients? And, and I’ve told them, you know, just like the story with, with my wife that, you know, yeah. There, there, there have been people who have thought that I have been cruel, no doubt.

But that has not been the experience of the vast majority of the people I’ve seen. You know, for a lot of them it’s, it’s been fun and playful and outrageous and it’s been liberating to them. And, and, and, and, um, and I, I think it’s a, I think it’s a matter of, of. Where you come from? Meaning, here’s what I’m kind of pointing at.

I think that not all clients, but many clients when I’ve done this type of stuff, uh, and I’ve really pushed our buttons and, and challenged them, have felt very provoked, but they’ve felt that, I’ve been really honest with them. Like honest, at a level that most people aren’t willing to be. Mm-hmm. , you know, often telling them the people, the, the, the stuff that they might really be thinking themselves or that other people are likely to think.

But it’s so politically uncorrect. It’s, it’s socially kind of unacceptable to say it. Uh, but I’ve kind of been, been the guy to say it. And, and there’s, there, there’s often a relief in that, you know, people chuckle, people smile, people lighten up, be because they, they realize that, that there’s something to it that, so, so the honesty is, is one thing that, and.

The experience that most of them have, Not all of them, but most of them have that, you know, this, this guy isn’t a prick. Like he’s, he’s not coming from a place of attempting to put me down to elevate himself or, or, or attempting to, to exploit me in some way. Uh, he, he’s really doing this with the best intent to help me change.

Yeah. And, and I, and I think as long as people can sense that your heart is in the right place, you’re, you’re coming from the place of sincerely wanting to help them and, and being willing to do whatever you can do to help. Uh, I, I think as long as, and there, there’s no guarantee that people will always sense that even if you come from that place, but to the extent that people do sense that you can do a lot of stuff.

Uh, on the other hand, if, if people sense that you are just a prick or an asshole or, or you’re, you’re, you’re just saying stuff to, uh, to, to put them down to elevate yourself or, or, or they sense that your, your heart’s not really in, in the right place, then I think a lot of people would be more likely to interpret it as, as cruel or, or malicious.

Um, so there’s something you mentioned a few moments ago that it’s not always this style of course, with every single client. No. No. And, and I, I, you know, I, I look up on provocation as, as. Whatever. I’ll tell you something funny. You know, after the book, uh, I, I, I would have people, uh, call me and, and say, you know, I, I want to work with you.

I didn’t want you to kick my ass. I want you to provoke me. I want you to challenge me. And I would go, Okay. And, and in my mind I would think, you know, Well, if I work with them like they ordered based upon reading the book, there’s no provocation in that. It’s like, it’s like that’s not provocative to us.

Yeah. That, that was the question I was about to ask around how it, it begins to build a reputation and expectation. There’s people who would call and say, you know, um, it’s what I love. My, my is always back to, uh, the Willy Wonka movie with Gene Wilder that you wanted him to yell at you next. . Right, right.

Yeah. . Yeah. So, so, you know, there would be no provocation in that. So what I would sometimes do, uh, in, in those cases would be to meet them at, at the door with my best Steven Gilligan impression of like, welcome and ju just a very tender present, you know, soft presence of, of talking about, you know, how they’ve been strong for so long and you know, how they push themselves, you know, pacing them, watching them at the same time, but then talking about this deeper strength that’s just kind of waiting to emerge on the inside.

And, and, and many times these people would, you know, would, would start crying and kind of, because, because being met with that kind of unconditional, uh, acceptance and presence, um, Was so far away from the ass kicking. Yeah. And the swearing that they read about in the book. So being provocative by not being productive, Provocative.

Exactly, exactly. Or, or, or, or for some people it might be humor or confusion or, or boredom. Like, like for example, one of my typical, uh, pattern interrupts back in the day when I used to do more of this stuff is if I would get what I would call agler mouth on the phone. You, you know, those people who just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and they don’t really answer your questions.

They just tell their story again and again, and again and again. And they go off on tangents and they don’t really listen. You know, that, that type of client. Yeah. So one thing I would often do, because these people of course come into change work, you know, expecting the person to listen to them and to listen to their story, and to understand them and to be empathetic.

And of course, that heartbeat ever works, especially with people who operate like that. So I would meet them outside the office and, and tell them, Is there anything that you really need to tell me verbally before we go in? Because when we go in, the deal will be that you will only communicate non-verbally.

Hmm. So, so essentially prohibit them from speaking and, and, and, and that would be insanely provocative for, for many of these people. Be because they, they would be so used to rambling and going off on tangents and, and being stuck in their internal dialogue and doing their drama and having to sit in a room with another person for, you know, a couple of hours, not speak.

Would, would often evoke, you know, states and, and resources and, and, and, and a solid reorganization of experience, you know, uh, given the context that I provided. So, so that can be a, um, a, a excellent use of provocation for the right person if for someone else. That wouldn’t do anything. Like, it wouldn’t make any sense, right?

Just to say that’s the protocol and that’s just what I do. Now, I’d share a similar through line that, um, I’m someone who refuses to buy into the absolutes that this technique is good or this technique is bad. Um, and if there’s a moment to use an age regression process, let’s go there. If there’s a moment not to use it, let’s not go there.

And in that incoming conversation, the phone call, the interaction in the office, the more that you know, well, how would you like that to be different? And they’re dipping back into that old story, you know, the more that they’re stuck in that past, the more likely I’m not going to give the conscious satisfaction of dealing with the past.

Instead, here’s where you are. Here’s where we’re going. Here’s what we can do to break this current, uh, problem state and step into a better one of, uh, utilizing what you know, which we could easily. And without negativity towards it, we could easily fall into the, into the old story. Um, you know, here’s a client recently that was in the office that she’s here to quit smoking.

And the whole story is about how bad it’s been in this recent breakup. And it just took the one pointed question of, Okay, but you were a two pack a day smoker before you met this guy, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so again, this place where we could easily fall into that old pattern with them, uh, yet instead to break that pattern and establish a different one instead.

Yes, there’s a, i I, I think there’s a, a, a kind of paradoxical, uh, thing at play with this stuff. And I think it also points to a limitation in the way that, that most people train their students. Um, and, and I think the kind of. Strange position is that, look, you know, the, the only way you’re really gonna get good at seeing clients is by seeing clients, you know, but, but seeing clients and gaining experience won’t necessarily make anyone good.

You know, That, that, that’s a myth, you know? Right. Well, that’s the only phrase that practice makes perfect and no practice makes permanent. Yeah. You know, it, it, uh, pretty much everyone has probably had the experience of going to school and having had horrible teachers who have 20 years of experience.

It’s like they’re not good teachers at all. They, they, they’ve been working as a teacher for a long, long time, or there, there was a guy called Robin Dos, who wrote this book called, uh, House of Cards. He’s a psychologist about 20 years ago, and he, he, he cited a lot of research showing that experienced therapists aren’t better as a group from novis therapists.

So it’s like therapists don’t seem to get better with experience and licensed professionals aren’t any better than non-licensed professionals. Like it’s, it’s, it’s all mythology. So, so the experience that, so, so on the one hand, you know, people need some experience to develop skills and, and to hone their skills, but at the same time, it’s clear that experience in of itself doesn’t necessarily make anyone wiser.

So, you know, you, you, you have to be willing to do stuff at a time where your skill level and insight might not really justify you being, you know, doing those types of things. That’s one thing. And, and, and something else is also, you know, do you have a good feedback system? Do, do you have, uh, so, so, so, so for example, Uh, an athlete, for example, you know, might have a coach, they might have video tape where you can, you can see your performance, you can wash the tape, you, you can get some suggestions for improvements, and then you can test again, and then you can see how that kind of works.

So I, I think, you know, hopefully in the future with, with people who, who train therapists and NLP and stuff like that, you’ll have more video supervision. You’ll have more, you know, kind of internships or, or, or mentorships of, of people doing experiments, people doing sessions, having someone more experience, watch it, giving feedback, testing new.

because it, it seems like most of us really need some good feedback mechanisms to, to, to re, to really learn and, uh, and, and get better. And then there are some people like, like, uh, Erickson, who you just in many ways intuitively just seem to know what to do. But, but that seems to be relatively rare. Mm-hmm.

So to bring in more of that supervision, to get that feedback loop that, uh, you know, do it this way, adjust it that way, make that change, Which, you know, from the training mindset, it isn’t necessarily the goal, of course, to turn this person into a clone of us. It’s to help them to develop their own style, their own approach.

Oh, yeah. Their own methods. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And, and, uh, John Renderer used to, to, to make this point, he used to say that, uh, that, uh, you know, probably one big contributing factor for all the world, you know, world record breaks in, in athletics in, in the last few decades have been the invention of video camera.

Mm-hmm. , you know, in addition to steroids and . But, but, uh, but yeah, you know, that ability to, to suddenly be able to see your own performance, uh, from the outside and see what you actually did, and then tweak and then go in there and do it again, and then see that on video, you know, to, to, to just have that perspective, to draw through line, to draw a metaphor out of that.

There’s, uh, I was on travel in Las Vegas a couple of months ago, a couple of weeks ago actually. There was a gym that I went to in the morning that, uh, and I had known of this just cuz I got into the hobby of weightlifting, uh, about maybe two, three years ago. And to see that here was one squat rack that was set up and it had three different camera tripods around it, Right.

For the intention of tracking, okay, what are the hips doing? What’s the level of the weight? And that similar through line that, you know, why is it that someone just broke the world record? Why is it the world records keep getting crushed? The classic example of, oh, if you run a mile and under four minutes your heart will explode.

And then someone did it and then high school kids were doing it. Yeah. So that feedback mechanism. Yeah. And, and, and there’s there, there’s also, you know, on the flip side of this, there is bliss in not knowing, you know, there is bliss in, uh, Yeah, Like, like for example, for me, I am very well read, you know, well studied, but, but I have no formal education whatsoever beyond high school.

And, and some people, you know, some people will say, Well, how, how can you be doing this type of stuff with no formal education? You know, that’s nuts. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You, you must lack a lot of knowledge. And I’ll go, Yeah, sure, . But, but on the other hand, you know, formal education is also a form of indoctrination.

You know, people, people end up kind of adopting the, the, uh, the unspoken assumptions of, of, of the field. And, you know, you, you try to advance, get a career within the system, within a power hierarchy, you know, so, so, so there, there is also a, a huge strength in not being indoctrinated into the same stuff, Not having exactly the same blind spots, not really knowing.

That, that’s not supposed to be possible. So as a, you know, younger guy, you know, 20 years ago, uh, there’s a lot of things that I helped clients do that people would tell me, you know, that’s not possible. You can’t do that. And I didn’t know any better. Mm-hmm. is second is like, um, something that comes to mind is, is this medical doctor, uh, by the name of Mason, you know, who, who helped this young kid with this, uh, uh, allegedly genetic disease, You know, some sort of fish skin disease that was just horrible.

I don’t know the Latin name for it, It’s just too long, too cumbersome. But, but it, it was well established that this was a so-called genetic disease. He couldn’t do anything about it, but he thought it was a, a severe case of wart. And he knew through the hypnosis literature that you could often use suggestions to, to, to, to help people get rid of words.

So, so he worked with it as if it was a case, words, and it almost completely vanished. I mean, it vanished on many places of the body, but some of it was left on some parts of the body. But it’s just a, a remarkable recovery. And, and this guy Mason, you know, later wrote that, that it was only later he realized that he had, he and his client, of course, had had done something that wasn’t, you know, you’re, you’re not supposed to do.

You, you can’t do, it’s, it’s not possible. And, and where he admitted that, had he known that he probably would’ve never given it a shot or, or perhaps if he had given it a shot, it, it would’ve been with, you know, in a state and would with nonverbals, that might have conveyed to the client, Yeah, let’s cry, but nothing’s really gonna happen here.

Mm-hmm. . So there, there, there, there is something to be said of not knowing any better or, or not having the indoctrination or, or, or being willing to, you know, it’s, it’s always such a mark of professionalism in most people’s minds to work within a so-called scope of practice. For me, the idea has always been to attempt to work outside of a scope of practice because that’s where the learnings lie.

You know, that that’s where you can actually pioneer some new stuff and, and, and, and do the experiments that, that, that haven’t been done. There’s a former student of mine that, uh, was in the experience of, he was a social worker, so licensed clinical mental health professional, and over time he was reading a lot of books on hypnosis, studying all the, all the NLP text, and just now beginning to seek out classes and go, Well, well, let me, let me jump into this a little bit further.

And I, I share this of course, anecdotally from his background, but his statement was from the specific training from the specific, let’s call it indoctrination of his education. It was very dissociative was his description. Yeah. That the goal was to step away from the individual and place a label on them and then begin to work on the label, because here is the accepted protocol for that label.

And yeah, a as he was then looking into hypnosis as he was then looking to more of a flexible methodology of it. , uh, to then realize that, okay, well I can just sit down and ask, how would you rather feel? What are those things you’d like to be doing and, and not get caught up in the, in the store. So similar to the one who would come in and, you know, would continuously be the blabber and continuously stuck in the old pattern.

Uh, but from his perspective, again, not even to do that himself anymore. Uh, which was a wonderful little political moment because he was in residence at a facility and they were getting upset with him because he was getting results a lot faster. Yeah. Oh, but the insurance covers this many appointments.

Yeah, but I’m done with this person now, but they have another 12 sessions while I’m done in three. Yep. Yeah. So then unfortunately that’s, that’s how the world seems to work. You know, the, one of the worst, one of the worst things you can do is, is to actually be effective and and, and, and to actually. to actually, you know, challenge the, the ideas that be, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s, uh, a great recipe for making enemies, I think, you know, uh, challenge people’s beliefs.

That’s, that’s the worst you can do to, to a lot of people. Well, that’s, that’s where the growth comes in. That’s where, you know, otherwise we wouldn’t have a car. We wouldn’t have light bulbs, we wouldn’t have medicines. We wouldn’t have these different principles. That there has to be that moment where, you know, the position of, at one point, the idea that seemed crazy is now, Oh, that’s just how we do it.

No, I always point back to, um, a family member of mine that had in a medical experience, uh, an epidural and had every possible side effect. The doctor described it as every possible side effect to the epidural, not including death. So basically everything that could have gone wrong from it did. And it’s a moment where, and this, this kind of stuck with me as an experience because the method to resolve that is what’s called a blood patch.

They drew blood from this person’s arm, injected it into the spine, and then immediately all the discomfort. And other than the incision point, um, every symptom went away. Cool. Which on one side was this. Oh, wow. Experience followed by the brain kicking in and going, Who the hell thought to do that? Yeah.

What had to be the first intention of this is the method to resolve this right. So it’s where I have to ask the opposite side of it, which would be that, have there been moments where this style of approach wasn’t the fit? Um, and you were realizing it may be too late into the process? Yeah. Imagine, imagine being the son of the first surgeon.

Or, or, or, or, or, or the son and daughter of the first chiropractor or something. Kinda going, Jay Zoom, come over here. Put, put your neck like this. I, I, I just got this idea. Let’s just snap it. Stay still. Let’s see what, Well, it’s what, there’s a old joke around, uh, I don’t know if this, uh, was over where you are, um, but a series of late night infomercials about correspondence learning at home to get certifications and of course it was TV repair, uh, things of that nature.

And then veterinary science and Wait, what? hate to be a cat in that house. So, so the question though is what ha can you think of a time where you found yourself in a process where, , you were maybe too deep into that style of provocative approach and it wasn’t the right approach. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Many times I’ve had, I’ve had many, many failures.

Mm-hmm. , uh, lots of clients, uh, I haven’t gotten anywhere with, I’ve had people, um, run outta my office and, and never come back, Uh, thankfully, uh, less and less throughout years. Yeah. But, uh, but yeah, I’ve, I’ve had, and I, I kind of, you know, when I used, when, when I used the, the, the word failure, I, I kind of have two categories for it in my own mind.

You know, One is cases, I’m able to see, look, you know, that wasn’t the way to approach this. Or, or, or, or, or I, I did something stupid here, or that was the wrong thing to say. If I could do it again, I do this, this, and this. Right. That’s, you know, that’s one thing. And then there are the others where I kind of, um, like I, I just recently worked with a client who, you know, is relatively seldom that people don’t come back for a session number too.

Mm-hmm. , if we have scheduled two sessions, it’s relatively seldom, but it actually happened today. I got an email from a client who said, I’m, you know, thanks for a good session, but this really wasn’t for me. I’m not coming back. And, uh, you know, in, in this particular case, and I didn’t really do anything that outrageous, you know, it wasn’t, but, but it, it seemed like a good session.

Um, and it seemed like she did some good changes. I don’t know, you know, But, but this is a different type of, I’ll put failure in quotation marks in that when I look back on that particular session, I don’t really know what I could have done differently. Mm-hmm. , like, like there’s nothing that pops up and says, Yeah, that was the thing I didn’t pick up, or, or that was the thing.

So, uh, and I mean, this is, this is something that is very prevalent in, in, in this NLP and hypnosis community. You know, people who talk about, you know, having a hundred percent success rates and, you know, they might have had two clients in their whole career with, and they’re, they’re just lying. Yeah, I was about to say, it’s rare to have someone say I’ve had the failure, cuz I’ve, I’ve talked about that here several times now of just where it wasn’t a match.

Um, and whether it’s the rapport, whether it’s the process, whether it’s, sometimes it’s a, it’s a filter that, uh, I’m very cautious. I, uh, from the stage hypnotist, Terry Stokes, he has a great, great way of talking about how some people would go, that was a bad audience and, well, not always, um, because they, you, as he would put it, your job is to train them to be the good audience as part of the experience.

Yeah. So there’s that interaction of, um, there is a theme though of, as I would call it, sometimes there is the method of breaking rapport in order to regain rapport the way it should have been built in the first place. There’s, there’s also sometimes the factor of, of, you know, I, I can’t really know what people are thinking deep down.

You know, this is of course old speculation, but. on some occasions. Not saying most, not saying many, but on some occasions, uh, I, I, I think what happens too is that people realize, Oh my God, I’m about to change big time. If I go back there, you know, my world’s gonna change. Mm-hmm. , you know, I’m not ready for that

So, so, so sometimes it might also be a, a, a matter of, of moving too quickly or, or, uh, you know, challenging a, a person’s deep assumptions too much instantly. Like, I, I had a huge insight many, many years ago, which to me was a huge insight because in, in much of the trainings I had done, you know, um, the, the, there’s thinking about success and failure as, as these, you know, categories of you succeeded with a client or, or the client didn’t change.

And I remember working with this client for. I can’t remember what, what type of neurological disease it was, but we worked on the pain and I think we were able to reduce it by some 10, 15%. So I looked at that in my own mind. This is many, many years ago. But I looked at that in my own mind as, as like, like a failure, you know, didn’t really help the client much.

The client looked at me with tears and said, No, no, no, this makes life worth living Nice. Like, like those 15%, 10 or 15% were, were in her mind the, the difference that made the difference between a life of, you know, too much suffering to be able to enjoy it and, you know, suffering severe enough, but where she could still have a worthwhile and happy life.

And, uh, you know, so, so helping someone, 10% may, you know, save a. Well, it opens up that possibility that, again, it can continue from there. It, it’s only one time I can think of that I had the client who, it’s the end of the first session and he looks at me very politely and says, Everything we did today validates the fact that I don’t want to quit smoking.

I know I can cut back though. Yeah. So it, it’s where on paper you could say, Oh, nope. That’s in the, that’s in the didn’t quit category yet. Uh, to be fair, he went from about two packs a day to only about maybe two or three a day, which is definitely a whole lot healthier. Yet it was this epiphany, it was this discovery of, No, this is something that I do want to have in my life.

That there are, I mean, which we can look at that category of being binary. It’s a yes or a no, but clearly there are people who drink in moderation. Uh, I make fun of myself, of my four cigar a year habit, uh, , which very often turns into, I don’t feel like showering tonight. Uh, I’m not gonna bother. Um, that there is that occasional indulgence.

And that’s where it shifted for him. Yeah. That the process aided a discovery. I remember as an association that comes up, this nutritionist client I once worked with who, who, who got pissed off at me. Um, I helped her stop smoking, and I very often had this ritual of, of them handing me their cigarettes and their lighter and stuff, you know, after the session.

And, and she just asked me at the end of the session, you know, What do you do with all these cigarettes? And I said, I give them to my grandmother. And, and she started, she started laughing, thinking I was joking, but I said, No, I’m, I’m serious. I give it to my grandmother. And she was like, What? How can you do that?

Because she enjoys it. And, and, and she got so outraged because, you know, and, and she was one of those people who. You know, are really into nutrition and smoking and, you know, drinking and how horrible it is, and how could I be such a hypocrite, you know, how could, how could I be aware of these things and make a living of these things and then do it to my grandmother?

I said, Look, I’m really just looking to get my inheritance quicker. You know, that’s, I said, No, you are. Seriously, I I, I love her. You know, I really love my grandmother. And I said, Look, I, I, I agree with everything you say that, that cigarettes are awful and, and, and they’re harmful and the signs is very strong and not a but, and the pragmatist in me says she doesn’t have that long left, probably anyways, would turn out to be true.

She has a lot of stress in her life, a lot of stuff going on. The cigarettes are her ways of coping. She, she enjoys it. It, it’s one of the things in her life right now that she really enjoys. Could she theoretically maybe work with someone and. and, and, and change those associations. Are they all elusory?

Yes. Will she likely do it? No. It it, will it likely be worth the hassle and the stress around it? No. Will she likely ever listen to me around it as her grandson? No. So the pragmatic, healthy solution, which I think did more good than harm, was actually to provide her regularly with a bunch of secrets.

Mm-hmm. and I, I, I, I don’t think this nutritionist ever really could see that. You know, It could, I, I think her mind was so just stuck, you know? But science says Right, right. Certain are bad. Like, yes, I agree and given these contextual factors, given this particular life situation, giving this, this, this, this, and this.

perhaps given all that, you know, continuing to smoke might actually be the less stressful choice. There’s a reference that I probably, uh, bring up way too often, but I still love it. Uh, the comedy routine where George Carlin reduced the 10 Commandments down to one, uh, of simply being thou shall keep their religion.

Th self, though, it’s where, when it’s not that in person’s intention to change Yeah. When they’re not expressing it. Uh, it’s the story of, I, I’ve seen this at Hypnosis conventions, um, and I’ve seen it at magic conventions when I used to have a hobby of that. Um, but it’s the, we’re all out to. , and here’s the waitress that clearly is having the bad day, right?

And the thought is, Oh, I, it’s, it’s, let me just label it. It’s entirely a show boating moment to go, Let me work with this person. Yet she’s working her job right now. Um, right. And more importantly, she hasn’t asked for that. It’s back when I used to have a trifold brochure for my business. Um, I had a good friend who goes, You know what’s great about this?

I know someone who needs every one of these things that you reference, you can work on. However, if I brought it up to them, they would hit me. Yep. So it’s, it’s that moment of where they are expressing that desire for change and to work with them in that place. Uh, I have the, the shrine in my corner of my office here, um, where people throw out their c it’s a big giant glass jar and it’s a bit of, uh, waking state, uh, suggestion that on my website there’s a big video where I’m talking about the history of the jar and some of the ones that are in there.

And it’s because of that, people walk into my office with the cigarettes already in hand, putting them in the jar. So it’s stacking the deck in the right favor. And yes, it is a self selection process that they’re doing that. And, and my story of that is the client who’s here, she goes, I’ve given you a lot of money.

Like, okay. She goes, You have those yellow boxes, the American natural cigarettes that are, uh, more quote organic ingredients. and I had to pause and go, Are you really asking me to raid my jar? She goes, Yes, . I only smoke two cigarettes a week with my sister, and those cigarettes are expensive. It’s like, because you had the guts to ask for it, you hit that jar, I’ll hit the one or the other room.

Yeah. Then until that person has that intention to change, then it’s not even the conversation. When they do have that intention to change, then game on. Let’s do this. Yeah. There, there, there, there’s something about the relationship too. I, this is probably a blind spot for me and, and, and perhaps a weakness, but I, you know, I, I’m extremely affected most of the time, you know, working with clients and then when I don’t work with clients, I, I don’t try to change or do any of this stuff with anyone else in my life.

Mm-hmm. , like, it’s, it’s, it’s completely, and, and I think part of it is just that libertarian bent that I have in terms of, you know, if people ask for something, You know, if it’s a voluntary, uh, contractual thing where someone says, Look, I struggle with this. Can you help me? And they’re sincere, it’s fine, but, but, but to metal with people in, in a case where, where they haven’t asked for it, you know, And of course the instance with my wife was so dramatic.

So that’s, that’s a counter example to that. But I, you know, I never do stuff. Um, and I, and I think there’s, you know, I really also prefer not to work with friends or relatives as, as clients. You know, I have, but I really prefer not to. And, and I think one reason for that, just in my mind, this might be aary, but, but this is how it looks to me, is, you know, if someone’s a friend or a relative, I, I, I think there’s often a kind of unconscious fear that, you know, what if I reveal this?

Will the person use this against me at some sort, you know, at, at some point. And, and also perhaps, perhaps on our part, you know, if I really push this person, you know, might I, might I lose the friendship? Hmm. And, and, and that’s, and I think this is often unconscious, you know, self-sabotage. But, but that, that’s why I think it’s a really good idea to have a, if you’re gonna do change work to, to, to have a clean relationship, you know, to, to, to, to do it with someone that you don’t have any other relationship with.

Well, there’s also, again, that mis mental expectancy that when they only view you as the person who is, um, the, uh, what was the phrase you used? Of the agent of change, Right. Which I love that. When they only have that perception, I don’t, Yeah. When, when that’s their perception of you, and that’s the role that you fill.

Um, I have the one odd experience of, I’m at like, uh, it’s a Costco, it’s a big sort of warehouse style store. And here’s this client who had an incredible breakthrough with me yesterday, and she then runs into me at Costco buying the, uh, you know, the 48 pack of toilet paper . Right. It’s the moment where it is magic.

When you’re in, you know, elementary school in the first grade, second grade, and suddenly you see the teacher out in public, but it’s, and for her, she actually commented that at the next session. She goes, Yeah, it, it, she goes, I was still successful this week, but something kind of shifted in my thinking that, Oh wait, this is a regular.

Yeah. Which that is valuable to the change process that is valuable to, you know, if they’re cautious around hypnosis. But that experience of suddenly this breakthrough moment kinda lost a little bit of the magic because here he was at Costco buying toilet paper. Yep. Yeah. Yep. There, there’s there, there’s, there’s something to that too.

So, uh, before we wrap up in about, uh, 10 minutes or so, cuz I know you’ve got a busy schedule, I’m about to have a series of clients too. Uh, what is it that excites you about personal change? Big picture question. What is it that excites me about a personal change? Um, what’s in it for you? What, what drives the, the passion to keep working with people, To keep teaching, to keep writing.

Yeah. Again, curiosity, both in terms of, you know, how we human beings work, uh, how we work, who we fundamentally are, and then what’s possible. Uh, that’s, that’s, that’s essentially it. That’s, that’s always been my, my passion with, with this, this type of stuff. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not so much in of itself. Uh, well, it, it is the results too, but it’s the process.

I’ll, I’ll, I’ll quote John render again because he, he, he has this wonderful, uh, saying that they kind of hit me like a ton of breaks when I, when I heard it and, and he said, You know, if, if you, if you are engaged with something or you have some sort of goal or some sort of pursuits, you know, ask yourself what is it that you think you’ll get out of achieving it?

And then unless those experiences or qualities are part of a huge part of the process in and of itself, it’s probably not worth. And he, he mentioned this story about his wife Carmen, you know, who he took on, uh, rock climbing, you know, and she, you know, hand these fancy nails and everything and came to the top exhausted and cried out and said, John, there’s nothing here.

you know, that’s in, Well, duh. Of course there’s nothing here. And I, I, I just recently, you know, I, I have a lifelong martial artist and, uh, I don’t know if you, if you’re familiar with mixed martial arts, but I, uh, not that long ago I heard this interview with this, uh, fighter, it was called Rampage Jackson, just by coincidence.

And, uh, someone asked him, uh, and, and I remembered him once saying in another interview that he didn’t really like to train. He liked to fight, but he didn’t really like training. And I remember thinking, you know, what a miserable life he must had. Hmm. Because you, you’re not fighting often. You’re training every day.

If you don’t like training, It’s probably not gonna be worth it, even if you’re wildly successful. So that’s something I heard many, many years ago, and now by chance I heard this other interview where he was asked, you know, Well, Rampage, you’ve had this long, successful career, you know, what is your biggest regret?

And he said, My biggest regret is becoming a fighter to begin with. I should have stayed in Memphis and, and, and I miss my family, you know, and, and, uh, I should have just been in the construction business because that’s something I would’ve liked, you know, liked to do. And, and the, the, the, the podcast host was so shocked and stunned by this answer, but for me it was very predictable.

It was like, Yeah, it makes complete sense because, because I’d heard previously that he hated training. So how, how could you ever enjoy, uh, the career as a fighter if, if you hate the training? So, so the same thing here. You know, I, I, I love. The changes and the results and, and, and the breakthroughs. And, but, but for me, the, the passion lies mostly in the process, in the curiosity, in in, in the playing with stuff in of itself.

And that’s, that’s how I know it’s, it’s, it’s a good choice of profession and, um, and it helps me have a, a life that’s that. Experienced as is, is very, very meaningful and very profound.

It’s Jason Lynette here, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program. Thank you so much for leaving your five star reviews over on iTunes. And again, this concept that you and I jumped into that of the case study that of learning by experience, as I would say, what do we need in hypnosis?

We don’t need any more scripts. What we need. Transcripts. So to actually get the experience of being able to track what a specific practitioner was doing inside of their hypnotic process, why they were doing it, what was the result that it got, and to be able to track through it. And this is why inside of my training, uh, program, hypnotic workers, you get real client sessions inside of there.

You get the videos, you get the transcriptions to model. And again, it’s that ability to get inside of the process and rather just learn a couple of new techniques or some clever scripts to use in your process. It’s all about actually stepping inside of the learning and actual practical hands on experience to really see and experience how this all works.

So head over to hypnotic workers.com and join our very active community. Get access to more than 60 or 70 hours of video training, which is all on demand. Hypnotic workers.com. See us in. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.