Session #118: Mark Andreas on Hypnotic Connections

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast. Session number 118. Mark Andreas on hypnotic connections. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette. Your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business to. Sets. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Welcome back. It’s Jason Lynette here with a phenomenal conversation that you’re really going to enjoy.

I’ve met Mark Andreas in passing at several conventions up until recently, and then by wonders of scheduling and uh, vendor area planning. Got to share a table next door to him. The Hypno Expo 2017, and then once he was back in Colorado, once I was back here in Virginia. Reconnecting and having this conversation that we’re now sharing with you, there is an outstanding theme that’s often, uh, I would say, uh, pondered upon in many trainings, whether it’s hypnosis, whether it’s N lp, and it’s where we start to talk about how habits are formed, how learning really establishes in the mind, and the premise is often introduc.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if kids could grow up knowing this, you know, rather than trying to muscle up with willpower. Instead, how do you go in and reprogram the unconscious mind? What if we could operate from this place of curiosity and this place of you’ve got many more options at your disposal, then perhaps you’ve given yourself credit for.

So again, so often the new student of hypnosis or NLP would have that premise of wouldn’t it be wonderful? If kids could grow up knowing this. Well, the cool thing is that’s kind of Mark’s background. His parents are Steve Andreas and Connie Ray Andreas, two of the people who were there in the formative years of nlp, and you’re gonna hear us actually have the dialogue of what it was to grow up with this understanding as just part of his upbringing and the experience of being someone who grew up with it, moved into other.

Uh, moved into other territories in terms of his life and now has come full circle back into it. As a trainer, as an author, and as a practitioner in his own right, uh, you’re gonna hear some interesting experiences of his work working in wilderness. Therapy and working with troubled youths, troubled teens, and all sorts of outstanding information about Mark, as well as information about his books.

You can of course check out over on the show [email protected] or simply head over to Mark Andreas. Dot com. That’s A N D R E A S, and mark is spelled with a k mark andreas.com. And with that, let’s jump right into this conversation of the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast. Session number 118, Mark Andreas on hypnotic connections.

So one of the questions that I’d usually kick off by asking somebody is, at what point did you discover hypnosis and nlp? And the side note is that so often the conversations will get under this wonderful, heady, big picture theme of, Oh, it’d be great if people grew up with this stuff yet. Mark, here we are chatting.

And you grew up with this stuff. Indeed. Yeah. I have a lot of, um, A lot of times people ask me, what was it like having parents do NLP on you all the time? Yeah. It’s a great first question. Let’s go with that one. . Yeah. So my first response is, well, how would you like some if somebody nlpd all over you? ? Um, but it is interesting that a lot of people have this, uh, initial, and I don’t think a lot of people realize it, but the difference between doing NLP on someone versus doing NLP with somebody.

Hmm. And so my experience growing up with my parents was very much that. Using these NLP tools, communication tools, hypnosis tools with me and my brothers, it, it never felt like they were. Using it to try to control us or, you know, using it on us. So I, I think that’s a massively important theme. And it’s where, I mean, the simple example of, as we talk about building rapport, so many of the original points of that were about getting in sync with somebody, modeling their experience to better communicate with them.

And it’s been kind of pulled into these other sales models at times to go, If I sit like you, you’re gonna buy my stuff. When really it’s, it’s allowing that better communication to. . Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it was very much in a, you know, my experience growing up was that for the most part it was very much in a, in in everyone’s benefit, you know, my parents as well as us.

Is there a specific story that comes to mind that kind of highlights that? Yeah, well I guess, you know, one of, one of many stories, but one that comes to mind at the moment is just the preposition language. You know, you know, when we were really little kids, and this is something that’s, you know, if you have little kids, you’ve probably used this.

Or, um, you know, for listeners, this can be a really useful thing. Um, is the whole, would you like to go to bed now or in five minutes, , And, you know, we, of course we would be like, Oh, five minutes. Five minutes. You know? And. Pretty soon, five minutes would be up and we’d be happily going to bed. And so, you know, it’s ano, it’s an example of, of, you know, you could look at that and say, Oh, that’s manipulative, but it really wasn’t at all because, you know, sleep is something that everybody needs, including kids.

So it was very much in our benefit to actually go to sleep and to go to sleep in a way that didn’t. Cause a lot of upset and, and crying and, Oh no, I don’t wanna go to bed right now, and that kind of thing. So that’s just a simple example of one of those presupposition language patterns that they used with us as kids that just kind of set this, you know, Introduced us to the fact that, okay, we’re like bed’s going to be happening soon and you get to have a little choice in whether it happens now or in five minutes.

And so that honored a little bit of choice making on our part at the age of five or whatever, and at the same time allowed us some time to start getting used to that transition and ready for that transition as opposed to having it just suddenly sprung on us in the middle of creating some block tower or whatever we might have been.

Which I’m flashing to. You’ve, you’ve seen my kids and there’s a moment where, uh, you know the importance of highlighting. Yes. That’s not necessarily manipulation. Here was the day yesterday that we brought the kids to the, to the local water park and Max at his absolute tiredness. That’s when he’s the fussiest getting ready for bed, Though I can think of a time which this leads into a question for you.

I can think of a time with Claire, our oldest, who’s now six, where. She clearly has found two pieces of candy somewhere in a drawer, and the question was, can I have this one or can I have that one ? And of course the answer was, Well, no, neither. We were about to have dinner . So the, the question to you would be, is there a time that you can recall where you were the one again, where it’s the difference between doing it too as opposed to doing it with where you found yourself becoming more aware of your own language in that environment as a child in the family?

Yeah, well there was a there that does bring to mind a moment that I don’t remember, but my parents remember it because they, cuz of course the kids are the best at just modeling what their parents do. And so there was a moment where I was talking with one of my brothers similar to the, uh, candy example with your daughter.

I was talking with one of my brothers. So it worked better than if I had tried to, uh, my parents. But, um, I was talking to one of my brothers and I. Like I wanted him to play with me, basically. And so it was something along the lines of I go, Hey Lauren, do you wanna come out? And, and then I stopped and I go, Lauren, which would you rather do?

And then I gave two options, both of which I involved him playing with me in some way. And so my parents had a little chuckle over that. Nice, nice. So then at what point did the, did would you say the formal education of it started to, uh, work its way into your life? I would say, well, formally. Yeah, I guess in a form, the most formal setting was when I actually took the practitioner training, which was soon after graduating college, although I studied my mom’s advanced language patterns tapes in college for a college project.

Um, so I guess in college and shortly afterwards and, you know, reading some of the early NLP books, using your Brain for a Change and Heart of the Mind, Um, and. You know, before that I certainly heard all these interesting stories from the trainings that my parents ran and, and unusual cases and, you know, examples of people making pretty impressive changes, um, from being in really stuck places.

So I kind of grew up with a lot of. Stories and Milton Erickson’s stories, and I remember in high high school reading Uncommon Therapy and skipping over all of Jay Haley’s analysis, but just reading the case studies of Erickson, working with people and just finding those really fascinating. So then growing up, was it the goal to continue along that same path?

It never was specifically, so I. Really was, Yeah, there was never any assumption that I would follow along that path. Even once I graduated college, my, pretty soon after I graduated college, I worked for a wilderness therapy program for a couple years. So it certainly involved a lot of, um, conversational skills and, you know, gave me a lot of, on the ground firsthand kind of experiential.

Um, learning about a whole wide range of behaviors of basically these kids. It was a program that kids were sent there by their parents, so mo mostly they didn’t wanna be there. So wide range of behaviors of defiance and, you know, trying to push my buttons, trying to run away, trying to sneak things into the program that they weren’t allowed to.

And, and so I got a lot of on the ground experience for dealing with a wide range of, of different, um, behaviors that were, that were often pretty conflictual between me or between students. And then it was after the wilderness therapy that I, that I’m like, Okay, you know what I’m gonna actually do as a career?

Cuz camping half of spending half a year, year in a tent, um, with teenagers surrounded by teenagers. Although awesome was not something I wanted do the rest of my life. So, That was when I started realizing, hey, I wanna, you know, this NLP stuff could be a, a good, a good way to interact with people and, and get and, and stay interesting.

And it’s something I’ve always been fascinating in is how people can change and, and achieve, you know, resolve conflicts, whether it’s internal or between people, you know? I think that’s really the, what was always the theme for me is interest in conflict resolution. . So I didn’t necessarily think that I would go into nlp, but I was always, I studied peace and global studies in college and soon after college published my first book, which was a whole collection of true stories of people’s, um, two true stories of conflicts that people found creative outside the box solutions to.

Well, I think that highlights a very important point that you know, whether it’s nlp, whether it’s hypnosis, that not everybody who goes through a training is, is coming out of it with the goal of actually sitting down, and let’s use the previous language of doing hypnosis or doing nlp, that these are modes of communication.

These are modes of producing change. And on the hypnosis side, I’d often refer to that we can do things that are hypnotic in nature versus. Doing hypnosis and all the language patterns, all the communication models have this wide ranging appeal that, again, not everybody has the overt goal. So I can see it absolutely fitting it in.

Uh, what was that, the, the major that you just mentioned that you were going originally for in college? Yeah, so I, it was called Peace and Global Studies, which was actually a act, actually a major with tenured faculty at the college. I went to IRM College in Indiana. . So it was a, you know, an interdisciplinary major, but unlike a lot of other colleges that sort of piece, the , so to speak, piece it together between other departments.

M actually has a peace and global studies department with tenured faculty and a core curriculum, and so we studied a wide range of topics, obviously that. Pretty big topic piece on global studies. So that basically encompasses economics, philosophy, history, politics, social studies, international relations, history, May maybe I mentioned that already.

Mm-hmm. , So there’s a lot of different places you can go with it, but, um, it really, it really appealed to me. It’s the only major that actually has a value statement along with it, which, is that peace is a good thing and we want more of it. Can’t argue with that. . Kinda interesting. Sometimes people knock it as, oh well, you know, it’s not scientific if you if you’re using it for something for a purpose.

But, um, I thought that was pretty cool to just have a major that actually is oriented towards, hey, we think peace is a good idea and we want to get more of. As the underlying principle. So the, the wilderness training that you had done, was that, uh, during college? Was that prior to college? So I actually got, I got wilderness training, like wilderness leadership training and led some wilderness trips in college.

Mm-hmm. , Erland College had a really strong wilderness program and definitely recommend it to anyone out there who has, has kids entering college. . And then after college was when I, when I got the job as in the wilderness therapy program, so that that’s when I was leading in college. I was just leading backpacking trips for college students.

And the wilderness therapy program was leading trips for teens, basically teens, that their parents were freaked out enough and didn’t know what to do and were worried for their kids. So it might be. Um, you know, promiscuity, it might be running away doing lots of doing drugs or, um, you know, gambling addiction in one case.

So basically anything where the parents were really concerned for their kids and basically at a loss for what to do. And so they go Here, please take my kid. And then, um, in addition to the wilderness component, that families would also fly in and do family and group therapy with the kids. So it was a pretty awesome program that it got to involve the whole family in that way.

Now that’s been a common theme though, in terms of a lot of the work that you’ve done since then. Correct. Which theme? The, the theme of working, let’s say, in the category of, uh, troubled teens. Oh, well, I would say that, so it is in the sense that I certainly still work with teens. I work with a wide range.

you know, from adults to teens. But I certainly still very much enjoy working with teens or with teens and their parents, um, in my private practice right now. Mm-hmm. . And my last book, Waling with Wolverines, which came out about a year ago or a year and a half ago, is all about my experience of what I learned in the Wilderness Therapy Program.

So that book is all about how to. Communicate, not get into power struggles, how to set effective boundaries that can’t be broken. Basically, how to be an effective leader or parent or teacher of teens in a way where you’re connecting with them and having fun and it’s working, and at the same time, you’re not just being a pushover and letting them run wild and do whatever they.

You know, and this would be a question, I think, uh, for, for my benefit as much as those listening to this, that so often, uh, a huge majority of clients that I work with are actually in this age range. Um, I see a lot of athletes that are 12, 13, 14 years old and um, you know, so often the parents would call and they’ve already had the conversation.

With the teenager and everybody’s on board and it’s great though occasionally there is that phone call that this is, you know, there’s a lot of issues with the friends. There’s a lot of issues with getting into trouble and it’s where from one school of thought we would think to say, Oh, well, until your son wants to make the changes too.

That’s when they’re not a fit yet for this process though. There you’ve been in that environment helping to facilitate that. So I, is there a story that comes to mind of working to help break down that power struggle and get that family unit back together, back in sync? Yeah. Well, the first thing that comes to mind, and you can tell me if this answers your question or not, is the, certainly, I, you know, like you said, sometimes I have parents.

Say, Hey, can you work with my son? And the son is like, you know, son or daughter is very much on board. And they’re like, Yes, I wanna, I wanna solve this problem. And in other cases, it’s much more the motivations coming from the parent. They’re wanting a change, but their kid really doesn’t, they’re not really interested in, um, making a change.

And so in that case, what I’ll suggest is that it’s probably gonna be much more effective if I work. The parent. Yes. Teach them these kinds of strategies that I used with the kids in this wilderness program and, and work with them on clarifying their values, their goals in raising their, their son or daughter and they’re with their son or daughter way more than, you know, one hour a week.

So there’s much more that they can do to be effective with their son or daughter than I can do, especially if there’s no motivation coming from the their, their child. So, And that’s what I always try to transition into, into saying, you know, I think there’s much more that I can teach you to be effective with your son or daughter than I could do in a single hour.

So if you’re interested in, in that, let me know. And then also usually parents in that kind of situation have their own triggers and their own inner work that they can really benefit from too. And if, if they clear that, then that’ll give them much more clarity. And resources in working with their son or daughter in these difficult situations.

Absolutely. And to change that dynamic, I mean, it’s where so often they’d call and I’d follow a similar through line that, you know, to, to bring the questioning back to the parents in an appropriate professional way to, to see what can, we can change, you know, from the top down as it were. Yeah, exactly. And so I don’t, you know, I’m careful to frame it in a way that.

Is gonna be received. Well, you know, I don’t say like, well, you know, it’s obviously your fault that they somehow that doesn’t go over well . So we didn’t just work with you and all of your problems. Um, but yeah, framing it in the, the way I said before of, you know, you’re with your son or daughter way more than I am, and so I can teach you things that you can, ways of communicating with your son or daughter and interacting with them.

That’ll be much more effecti. Than me. So really empowering the parents, letting ’em know there’s a lot that can be done. Um, and that I can teach you that you can be much more effective than I can be. Well, I chair, there’s one category where I follow a similar route and maybe I’m a little bit, uh, direct on this one just cuz I found it.

It helps it, it’s where the parents would call and let’s say it’s a weight loss hypnosis process and they’re calling on behalf of the 10 year old Uhhuh. I’ll just find that moment to politely ask. Well, just to gather some further detail here, how would you say your health. Mm. Yeah. And consistently it’s like, well, yeah, I could stand to lose quite a bit as well.

It’s like, well, in that case, and especially 10 years old, you know, in that case, to change the dynamic, to change how you’re eating and to get that foot in the door, and so often that tends to be the, the place where we do the work and then the dynamic of the family changes, and then it trickles down from there.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, that’s, that’s an excellent point that I also also use is. The framing of, you know, one of the best things that you can do is model the behavior that you’re wanting to see in your child. So if they’re not really interested in therapy right now, or coaching or whatever, if you do coaching with me, that’s gonna be the, the, the most likely way of getting them interested at some point.

The beautiful phrase that success is contagious. Yeah. Yeah. And also just, just the fact that, oh, well, mom’s doing this. Seems to think there’s some value in it for herself, , Um, then yeah. But then, yeah, the second thing of if suddenly mom’s getting more of what she’s wanting in the actual interaction, that’s much more likely the son or daughter will go, Hey, I, I wanna get a little bit more of what I want in this situation.

I wanna, I wanna talk to Mark now cause I thought it’s a nice benefit that, again, the, the phrase often becomes, we have a good way of working through family. That it starts with one and then here come the siblings. Here come the other parent. Here come the neighbors. And then it’s where from, if we wanna bring it into the business conversation, just simply doing good work is that an ex is an excellent business model.

Yeah, indeed. Yeah. So let’s, let’s go back to the story though. So you did your, uh, official training of it, uh, right after college. What was the next step from. . So that was during, while I was working in the wilderness therapy program. And that was really obviously useful and helpful in, in all the behavior and conflict and defiance I was coming up with, coming up, um, yeah, experiencing in the, the program.

And then it was just after. And of course, you know, after every shift I would be debriefing. And that was just, I may have that research to just kind of like vomit all of what just happened in the last three weeks and you know, Johnny ran away and blah blah blah and this and that, and somebody else snuck some drugs in and whatever, and, you know, brainstorm with them and come up with different strategies.

So that was, you know, I’d say that my informal learning has been much more than my formal learning in terms. Time and value just being mentored by my parents and and others. And then after the wilderness therapy program, that’s when I took my master practitioner, and then soon after that, did my trainer’s training, NLP trainer training, and then also have been sponsoring various trainings together with my parents.

Uh, we host like three trainings a year or so in Boulder and have been doing that since 2009. So that’s also been really fun and a way that I’ve gotten loads of training through sponsoring people to come in. Um, Andy Austin’s metaphors of movement is a whole, whole, um, modality that we’ve really enjoyed learning from, um, other masters, bringing them in.

Getting to, you know, basically the model of bringing people in that we wanna learn from. Yeah. And ho holding a training that they’re doing. And then also, um, doing some of our own training as well. So then to bring it up to the present, how is it that you spend most of your time nowadays? So now I would say I spend most of my time, um, In terms, do you mean in terms of business time?

Oh, answer it any way you like . Okay. Let’s see. Well, I would say it’s a combination of the one-on-one coaching and training and writing. Mm-hmm. . So those are like the three main focuses and it shifts from year to year and from month to month. Like, you know, the year before my last book came out, I was really working.

The writing a lot. And then once that came out, now I’ve been much more focused on the training and, and, and clients and taking a little bit of break from the writing. But I, the writing is something that I really enjoy and will continue to do. And, you know, initially I was actually, my, my, my original plan, even before college, was to be a fiction, a professional fiction author.

So, . I actually have a whole side project of writing fiction novels and one of these days I’ll probably just publish them. I’m still seeing if I can find a traditional publisher, but the whole publishing industry is really changing a lot. Mm-hmm. probably eventually I’ll just publish ’em myself and, um, and, and just, that’ll be a fun thing that I do, but I think that it, it’s actually a better fit for me to be doing this as a career than, than just the fiction writing.

It can be easy. to really kind of lose touch with human beings being just in my own world, writing fiction as much as I love it. So, so I think it’s a good thing that that didn’t quite happen, uh, the way that I expected it to. Although, who knows, maybe I’ll, I’ll publish to them and become a famous science fiction author, uh, sometime in the future.

Are there certain themes that you’re drawn? Yeah, definitely this, that similar theme of conflict resolution is key to both of them of, you know, Yeah. One of them more of a societal level of conflict resolution. And the other one is a story. The sci-fi book is a story of an alien culture and, and human culture and confus confusion, uh, taking place based on.

You know what’s lost in translation or not quite understood in the translation, which that pretty much sums up all communication right there at the surface level. . Yeah, exactly. So it’s very much about, it was actually inspired by George layoff’s, uh, book on metaphor, his moral politics and inspired a whole sci-fi novel about, about metaphor and.

The confusion that can ensue and we don’t realize, uh, somebody else has a different model of the world, and that metaphor may mean something different to them than it does. So then I’ve got a sort of a bigger picture question in terms of themes, and not necessarily an us versus them mindset, but it’s so often that, um, I’ve interacted with you now at a couple of hypnosis conventions and there there’s often this sort of really hard divide between hypnosis and nlp.

If you had to give answer as to what the difference is from one modality to the other, uh, how, how would you answer that? Yeah, that’s a really great question cuz actually at the Florida conference where we were just hanging out together at the, we, uh, Michael Watson and I did a post conference training on NLP for Hypnotists.

So basically we were talking about that theme and one of the things I think that’s quite, you know, at one point Michael said, you know, if things had worked out differently in the history of NLP and hyp. and he went into a little bit more detail, but he was saying it’s po quite possible that they could have ended up being the same thing.

Mm-hmm. , Um, that there wouldn’t have even been a distinction between hypnosis and nlp, that they would all be under the umbrella of the same name. And I think that’s really true, that there’s, there’s so much overlap in. in both of them. I mean, so much of NLP was modeled off of Milton Erickson who’s a hypnotherapist and modeling his language patterns and the processes he would guide people through and how he would gain rapport and, and that kind of thing.

And obviously other aspects of NLP were modeled, you know, off of other, you know, VI Virginia Satir or Fritz Pearls or other. Successful individuals, successful communicators or change agents. But so much of it is really similar, um, that I think there’s more similar than there is difference, but it also depends on your definition of, I guess, of, of each of them and what you’ve been exposed to.

Because I think in both hypnosis and nlp, you can be exposed to a pretty watered down kind of, um, Quick version of it. Mm-hmm. that doesn’t really have a depth or you can be exposed to, Wow, there is a vast amount here that I could continue learning for a really long time and still not know it all. And both hypnosis, nlp.

Yeah. And I chair from, from my own education, uh, along the way that in the early years, uh, this would’ve been probably my, my backstory was that I saw the stage heist at my college in 2001 and started to read books that I could grab a hold of, started to watch videos I could find, uh, wish we had YouTube back then.

Uh, but the experience of just reading what I could, and it, it’s the same experience that happened one time. At a hypnosis meetup that I was hosting at my office, that my original entry point into all things in LP was basically, uh, for, similar to a lot of the hypnosis trainings that may be out there, some of the older school approaches of, Yeah, here’s a script for this.

and I can flash forward to seeing that moment occur that I had, and I’m thankful for this of, I was running a workshop on the fast phobia cure, and here’s a local hypnotist that suddenly breaks in the middle of it and goes, Wait a minute. They’re supposed to answer the questions as opposed to, Now imagine this.

Now do this, now do this, now do that. Yeah. As opposed to my biggest takeaway, and this is. Really infiltrated my whole lifestyle from all the trainings over the years too, is just this constant state of curiosity of, well, how do you do that? How does that occur? What’s, what’s processing? What’s behind that?

What’s creating that reaction? What’s that feeling that. From an early jumping in point of my seeing clients as a hypnotist years to see seven or eight back when I would run marathon schedules in my office to see seven or eight people quitting smoking, and every session was different. Not for the sake of my novelty, but because everyone brought a different background, a different story, a different map to that situation.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s. A really excellent point and excellent distinction is the, one of the things that I really appreciate a lot about the NLP as I learned it is that back and forth of, of really, um, yeah. Asking questions and actually wanting to hear the answers if you come back, Oh, say that one more time.

I think that’s the biggest takeaway here. . Yeah. Yeah. Being able to, Yeah. Ask questions of the other person and actually listen. What answer comes back and. Base what you’re doing on the person in front of you and what you’re learning about their unique model of the world, rather than a cookie cutter kind of a approach.

Um, another thing I would say is that, and just to, to tag onto that first is because a lot of people have commented on, Well, that doesn’t look like hypnosis. You’re just like having a conversation. Um, about NLP sessions, and what I would say is that it is hypnosis, because what’s happening in any NLP session is that at least I’ll speak about the ones that I do, um, is that, you know, I’m asking about somebodys experience like you’re saying, and then waiting, you know, and then they close their eyes, they go inside, they notice something.

Okay? That’s already a trance right there. If you’re walking along the street and you run into an old friend and you go, Hey, how are you doing? Like, what’s the shape of your feeling? Um, that would be a very, that, that’s like a hypnotic question right there, because we don’t go around asking people what the shape of our feeling is or things like that, that you ask in nlp.

Uh, so just the fact of asking somebody to pay attention to their experience in a different way is hypno. And it’s getting them to pay attention to their experience in, in a whole new way that they’ve never done before. And then they come out and report about it, and then I’ll ask them something else about their experience.

They’ll go inside, Notice another aspect of it. Okay, what way is it, You know, is it hot or cold? Is it, et cetera. And so that’s fractionation right there is they’re going in. And then coming out, reporting a little bit, going in again, a little bit deeper, and so it just happens kind of naturally in the conversation.

Is this deepening? Some experience that I’m guiding somebody to, Well, there’s a, there’s a word that I’m often cautious around using in this type of conversation, and it’s actually the word technique, but it’s where just simply that asking of questions, the unpacking of that reality, uh, while may not necessarily be something that can be, um, you know, packaged as, Oh, here’s a brand new technique.

Just do this and sell it online for $27. It’s, it’s the experience that just by asking those questions, You’re driving them inside and very often they’re starting to unravel that issue just by exploring it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I think the, you know, my dad, he’s, he’s a big fan of what he calls recipes for change.

Mm-hmm. . And so it’s a little different than having a script. You know, a script would be kind of, , I guess it’s like a, a recipe, but we may not have found, we, we may not know yet whether this script is actually the right recipe for the person in front of us before asking more questions. And so it might be if we just read a, if we learn a basic info and we just read somebody through a script that might fit their experience.

But likely we can have more precision than that. And, and so a lot of the NLP processes or recipes that my parents have put together, it, you know, it’s, it’s a series of steps. And my dad’s goal has always been to write down the steps with enough clarity that somebody who didn’t even have NLP training could theoretically guide somebody through those.

And you know, if the answer to step one is A, then you do this. And if the answer to step one is B, then you do this and have it, uh, clearly, uh, the, have the steps clear enough that somebody could guide you through the process, get the change without even knowing how it worked or why it worked. Nice, Nice.

Um, yeah, so it’s made in a sense, Taking a script to the next level of being Interac. There’s a, there’s a business that I’m familiar with that, uh, the, the CEO of that company, the way that he communicates with his staff is something that on paper this would look wonderfully hideous. Uh, and to understand the intention behind it, it’s absolutely brilliant that as he puts it to his staff.

If there’s ever a moment, and this is an advertising company, if there’s ever a moment that you position yourself in this company as being irreplaceable, you will be fired. Your goal as you’re doing this job is to, uh, create the manual so anyone else in this company can pick up what you’re doing and do it just as well, if not, And it’s where it’s a company that a lot of their goal is that education, but it’s where have you found a benefit as now working in the split reality of seeing your own individual clients, where the mindset of being the trainer is enhancing your sessions or being the mindset of the coaches enhancing your training?

Oh, well, I would definitely say that being in the mindset of the coach has enhanced my training for sure. If I didn’t have the one on one experience, you know, I wouldn’t have the same kind of confidence in a training context when I say, Hey, somebody wanna volunteer to, and we’ll just take them for this project process, right, Right now.

So having the in person experience to know, Yeah, I can do this and, and, and this works is definitely really important to the training. . And then I think as far as the training, enhancing the coaching, I’m sure that it does Also, in just maybe in a more subtle way, I think that I, I do really like the interplay of the two because I really also like the role of teaching and for people who want to understand more of the underlying principles as opposed to, Just hand be the steps and I’ll guide somebody through the process and hope it works.

Um, obviously having an underlying understanding of the principles is, is takes you to the next level of when something doesn’t work the way that you expect. Being able to get creative and explore different possibilities. Um, and you know, a lot of times when I’m working with clients, you know, sometimes I may.

Pretty much run through a particular process, like the grief process, and that works great. Other times I might start there and something else happens and we switch to some other process, and then half part way through, we bring in a little bit of this other method, and it’s kind of a much more free form thing of meeting the person where they’re have, where they are in the moment and what’s gonna be most useful.

And it’s not always as, um, As, as straightforward as as a single process, which brings to mind one of my favorite themes of just the user experience. So someone is coming into the space to work with you. What, what does that experience look like? How does that play out? ? Well, the, at the most basic level, when I meet with clients, I, I schedule up to two hours and then I just charge by the hour for how much time we use.

And I like to, I like that format because then it doesn’t feel like I’m rushing to do what we need to do within a set timeframe. Mm-hmm. . And so, so I like that freedom to, to go with the amount of time that feels like. The amount we need for this session, whether that’s 45 minutes or whether that’s two hours.

And you know, for some, some people we get to two hours and we’re like not even close. And occasionally, you know, this depends on the stamina of the person, but occasionally I’ll have clients where we’ll go longer than that. So I like to be open to, well, yeah, so that, that, that, I like that way of working.

Then I don’t feel pressured. to bring something to a resolution prematurely just because it’s the 50 minutes is, is almost up or that kind of thing. Yeah. There’s something magical about, uh, to use some of the language here, being a little vague about the, the timeframe that my language is. I schedule everything as a 90 minute block in case we need it.

Uh huh. Yeah, so with that phrasing, if it’s 45 minutes, if it’s an hour, if it’s the full hour and a half though, you know, being mindful of that timeframe, so from the client side, they’re coming into your space, how does that process begin with you? Oh, well, it begins, I guess, first before they even come into the space, and I actually see a lot of clients over Skype.

So I see people from all over the world, over Skype, and then also in person. in Boulder. So, um, I find that as long as the Skype connection works well, , most, uh, most sessions work really well over Skype. There’s a few things that can be, obviously, it’s, it’s nice to be in person when that’s possible and, but you can really, you know, you can see the other person.

You can, even if they have the camera set up correctly, you can see most of their gestures and really, It works, I find quite well over Skype. So I guess the process would start before that, you know, before our session. Um, when somebody contacts me and either they know that they want a session and in which case we just book it, I send them my background form, which, you know, if anyone’s interested in the, the questions that I ask there.

A lot of those are well formed outcome questions from. Standard NLP training, that’s that start to get somebody in answering the questions already, getting more clear about what they’re wanting from the session. So I find that that’s a really useful way to get things started before we even meet. And then obviously I can read that before we meet and.

Get much more of a sense of what we’re gonna be doing or what I, what my guesses are gonna be most useful to them. Yeah. So then you have those outcomes. Now is there a structure to how you begin the process then? Or is it more free form? Um, what I would say my underlying structure is, well, a combination of my intuition of what’s gonna be most useful and sort of a logical progression.

Uh, for somebody combined with asking them, what’s most important for you to start with mm-hmm. , because I think that, and usually people know what’s kind of the first step and are, are right about that. You know, if I, if I have a different intuition on it, then I might mention that and say, you know, I know that this is really important to you, and my guess is that if we take care of this, that’ll, that’ll be like very supportive of you.

Uh, you, you know, for example, you know, maybe the first thing they wanna deal with is being more, they wanna be confident in the world or something like that, and they have another goal of wanting to learn something. So maybe, you know, I might, in that case, suggests that confidence really is a natural result of competence and maybe it’s worthwhile focusing on the thing they wanna learn.

And then seeing how that supports their general confidence. And then if they still want more confidence after that, then we can look at that. Mm-hmm. , is there a certain category, a certain issue that you perhaps, uh, find yourself working with more than anything else these days? Yeah, anxiety is one of the big ones that I find almost, it seems like a majority of my clients have as an aspect, if not the main issue that they come.

Got it. Got it. And then from that, is there a certain route, uh, just to kind of, uh, unpack this a little bit, is there a certain route that you’d often find yourself going with that person to, as I’d say, to unravel that anxiety? Yeah. Yeah. So I guess maybe this helps. Now I’m getting more clarified on an answer to your earlier question in terms of, you know, Structure do I take, or what approach do I take?

It’s more, yeah, it’s more in that background form, finding out what are their main issues. Is it anxiety? Is it grief? Is it, um, anger? Is it, I have no idea what’s going wrong, but my life is not the way I want it. And depending on what their main complaints are, is gonna lead me into specific NLP processes that are modeled off of people who.

Overcome anxiety successfully or overcome grief successfully, or, um, dealt with criticism, that kind of thing. So, yeah, so for example, if somebody’s main thing is they come for anxiety, then I’m gonna be immediately thinking, um, of, there’s a, a process, the spinning feelings process you’re probably familiar with, and there’s various, you know, I have a certain way that.

Like to do it. That’s a modification based on Nick Kemp from the United Kingdom. There’s some different ways of doing it, but that’s something that I like to start with with anxiety because it tends to have such a dramatic physical, um, well emotional change in the moment with somebody. And so that can be a really, even if there’s more work that is useful to be done, that can be a really good convincer.

Wow, something’s happening here. I’m already getting some cha uh, some major changes and something that I’ve never been able to have any control over before. That brings up a great theme of incident gratification that the, the challenge that. Very often the new student I’d be interacting with would have, with working with fears, working with anxieties, more so specifically anxiety and confidence is that you’re working to sort for a change.

That the measure of success is something not happening, you know, as opposed to the weight loss client, they stepped on the scale. They’ve lost weight. The stop smoking client, they’re no longer smoking the pain relief. They’re in less pain, they’re in less discomfort, or not at all. Uh, but in terms of that anxiety, the, the tracking, what is it that you’re often doing to, to measure that?

Yeah, that’s a great question because I always want my, you know, I tell my clients, You’re the, I’m the expert on what we try. You’re the expert on what actually works. So I’m, I want to hear feedback from you. And so the best thing is to, you know, if, depending on what the anxious anxiousness is about, you know, if it’s anxiety around fear, uh, if it’s a fear of heights kind of thing, which is usually anxiety, not, uh, traditional phobia in terms of the structure of it.

Um, although not always, you know, obviously the best thing would be to have a session and then. Go up to the top of a tall building with them and find out what the response is right there in their own experience. So in that example though, of the client that just, I always feel this, which again, we can start to unpack that, but I always feel this way.

It just pops up out of nowhere. How is it that you’re working with that individual to track that success? Okay. Yeah. So you with anxiety, um, My experience is that usually, even if somebody would start saying that, once I find a little bit more, once I get a little bit more details of like really is it all of the time, Is it like sleeping?

Is it, is it when you’re watching your favorite TV show is that they’ll go, Oh no, I guess it’s, you know, the closest I’ve had to that with anxiety is somebody that might have like sort of a low level anxiety throughout kind of, that feels pretty steady. But there’s definitely waves and there’s times and specific context where it really ramps up.

And so then just in answering those questions, I think is already useful because it gets them starting to tune in a little bit more to their experience rather than, I’m just always anxious and starting to notice, oh, what are some of those triggers? What are the contexts where I, where it really ramps up and.

Then that’s what we wanna test after doing one of the NLP processes. Guiding somebody through that is to ideally, you know, if, if we can actually go into the context, that’s ideal. So step into the elevator or go to the top of a building and, and watch them and see are they getting anxious or not. That’s obviously the best test, but you can do a really good job by guiding somebody into the experience and just say, you know, afterwards.

Close your eyes. Okay. Imagine you’re in front of an elevator and there they are, The door is open and what happens? And then you want to be watching their nonverbals and seeing are they grimacing? Are they flushing? Are they calm and relaxed? And that can be a really good test, especially if you test in the beginning.

You know, when you first ask them, Okay, so tell me about elevators. And they get all flushed or, or, Twitching or you know, whatever the signs are of their stress, the external strength, signs of their anxiety or stress, then that gives you a really good comparison to after you’ve done the intervention, to ask ’em that same question and see how they respond.

And usually if they respond comfortably and relaxed, when you ask them that, you know, close your eyes, see that those elevated doors opening, what happens or, Okay, imagine there’s a, you. Spider right here, crawling across the floor or whatever it is. And that is usually a pretty good test of what’s gonna actually happen.

And uh, the next time they see a spider elevator. Which is that biggest value of, again, not just taking it at the surface level of, well, they said this, well, they said that, of getting into that experience and actually calibrating that the change is in motion. How much time would you say or what, what’s your approach in terms of, let’s say, arming your clients?

So giving them strategies, giving them techniques to take with. . Yeah, that’s a great question. I like to, as much as possible, or as much as they’re interested in, give them tools that they can start using themselves and, and doing their own inner growth work themselves. So a lot of the, So, so I’ll, I’ll, I like to do a combination of, of, and again, this is something that’s pretty tailored to, to the individual.

If it’s somebody who’s really just not interested and they’re like, just, you know, just cure me. , . Um, first of all, I think often that that’s, that’s a little red flag, , but they may not be that invested in the change. First of all, if they’re not willing to actually go to any effort themselves, although they are willing to go to the effort of paying you and showing up.

That’s one, that’s something that does bring up a, just a, just to jump in there for a moment. Yeah. There, there’s a mindset that I’ve only run into. I can only think of about four or five clients over the years that this has fit into. And there was a small hesitation on this, but I’ve had people where, just to put the category out there, money and time wasn’t an.

Mm-hmm. people who from a hypnosis more, you know, more hypnosis styled approach. I’d teach them something and they’d go, Well, this is working for me and, uh, I enjoy working with my personal trainer. Could I pop in every other week rather than do it for myself? And from that context. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, one.

more of an ongoing, uh, business coaching type thing. One was an athlete, another one, a very, very successful speaker. So places where it’s not necessarily, you know, the mindset of milking someone for every dollar, no, they’re seeing a value and they found the way that they like doing it. So it’s not quite the, uh, oh, just do it for me.

It’s the, again, I enjoy working with the trainer. Let me work with you on this. Continue. Yeah, exactly. And that makes total sense. Which that’s, that’s a rarity, but oh man, that’s beautiful. And that happens . Yeah, totally. So often I’ll frame it similarly to, to, well, that includes that possibility such as, you know, I’m happy to, First of all, I’ll say something like, you know, There are a lot of these things you can guide your learn to guide yourself through and you can get a lot of benefit yourself and that can be particularly valuable if you don’t have a lot of funds, but you have more time.

And it can be a really valuable thing to not have to track all that stuff, even if you have a lot of NLP training, to not have to be in charge of guiding stuff through the process and just have somebody else to do that art so that you can just have your experience. And that’s a really valuable thing too.

So I’ll, I’ll say, you know, as much as you want to get involved and, and learn these tools to, to self guide, uh, through them, I’m totally on board with teaching you and as much as you wanna just let me do that and so that you can just have the space to just have your experience and not worry about anything else, then that’s also very valid.

Outstanding. Outstanding. So then, uh, what’s, what’s coming up, uh, next for you in terms of trainings? So what’s my next training is going to be the winter park, uh, NLP practitioner training. That’s, uh, residential training for 12 days. And I’ll be teaching a couple days in that, most likely. Um, that’s this summer.

Um, end of July, beginning of August, and then my next training after that is a core transformation training that I’m teaching in Holland. And you can find out about both of those on my website, Mark andreas.com. So those are, those are the upcoming things and I guess thoughts live. Uh, conference as well, so I’ll be teaching some shorter things there.

Yeah. And we’ll put links over to mark andreas.com over in the show notes at, uh, Work Smart Hypnosis. And I, I’ll put links to the books as well. Just give us a brief, uh, synopsis of the two books, so, uh, for the listeners too. Sure. Yeah. So the, my first book is Sweet Fruit From the Bitter Tree. That’s the one I referenced.

It’s just a whole collection of true stories of conflicts that people found creative outside the box solutions to. And so it’s just a really nice collection of stories, reading one before you go to bed or something like that. And the second book, The Waling With Wolverines, Finding Connection and Cooperation with Troubled Teens.

That’s my most recent book about all about how to be an effective leader with teens to connect with them, set appropriate boundaries. And have a lot of fun rather than being sort of a autocratic, uh, imposing your will upon them sort of, sort of thing, which nobody likes, but I think a lot of parents and teachers feel trapped into doing cuz they just don’t know what, what else they can do and still keep kids safe.

Absolutely. And I’d share, you know, having been through them, having looked through those books myself, the experience of really learning by way of the stories and where the stories will sort of infiltrate their way into the sessions, that was, you know, one of the aspects that I really picked up from reading, uh, Heart of the Mind.

many years ago, or even back to your story that you mentioned earlier about the Hailey book of Yeah, I’m bypassing all the extra, uh, commentary. Just give me the next client case study. Give me the next client case study. Yeah, exactly. So in the waltzing with Wolverines, I also packed as many story examples in there as possible to, cuz those really do teach, teach a lot, uh, a lot more than just analysis as all hypnotists know.

Outstanding. Well, Mark, it’s been great having you on here. Great to be here. Nice having a conversation. Jason, Lynette here once again, and as always, thank you so much for heading over to iTunes and leaving your five star review and sharing your feedback with this program on Facebook, on all your social media mechanisms, smoke signals, whatever streams you use that are social and media styled.

I’d also encourage you to head over to hypnotic workers.com. Hypnotic workers is the. Digital access to my Hypnosis for Change library. It’s everything from powerful inductions, instant and rapid methods to induce the hypnotic state. You’re gonna learn strategies for deepening the state of hypnosis, locking in hypnotic phenomenon.

And we don’t need any more scripts in the hypnosis profession. What we need instead. Our transcripts and inside of hypnotic workers, you actually get to see me in action with clients doing real sessions, and you then get to model the experience by then accessing the, uh, painstakingly transcribed dialogue of those interventions.

To learn more, head over to hypnotic workers.com. You get access to everything for just $47. Head over there right now, hypnotic workers dot. See on the inside. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.