Session #146: Craig Sigl on Mental Toughness

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 146. Craig Siegel on mental toughness. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business six. Sets. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Game on. It’s Jason Lynette here with a content pack session featuring Craig Siegel.

Craig is an expert on working with athletes, and you’re gonna hear some amazing takeaways in this conversation as we actually talk through his protocols, his systems, his actual training process. As well as, um, probably in some way how he was the one who walked away with the trophy at the first ever hypno bowl at Hypno.

Thoughts Live 2017. Seriously, this guy demolished everybody in a bowling tournament. Because that’s what you do at a hypnosis conference. You’re gonna hear inside of this, uh, conversation two different schools of thought in some way that actually tend to correlate rather easily his metaphors that he’d often use in working with professional athletes.

And we even go into the specifics of some of the categories that may often come into your office. I share with you if you are not yet working with athletes, it is perhaps one of the most rewarding as well as one of the most exciting things to work with. It. It’s a category where you actually get a wonderful dose of instant gratification because they’re going off to their practice, to their game.

And you’re getting that feedback. And yes, on some note on the business side of things, the athlete is also someone who is continuously improving their game. And for that reason, it’s actually a good, logical, if not ethical reason, to continue working with them as needed. I share, you’re gonna hear us talk in this conversation about working with gymnasts.

Uh, I bring up the theme of working. Uh, power lifters and very often getting into the work. But then here comes the competition. Here comes the meat, and it may be a good reason to recharge and refocus the process. Yes, we ought to be teaching skills and strategies. Yet the same way that they would work with the coach is the same way they could work with the hypnotist.

As well. So check out Craig’s training. You could head over to mental toughness trainer.com. To learn more about Craig as well as his work, I’d also encourage you to head over to hypnotic workers.com. This is the entire digital access pass to my hypnotherapy training library. Inside of it, it’s got inductions deepening strategies.

Techniques for change, you won’t find anywhere else. Real client sessions, and there’s even a module specific to working with athletes. Check that out. It’s more than 90 hours of content at a growing library, hypnotic workers.com, and you can get full access for just $47 hypnotic workers.com. And with that, let’s jump directly into this outstanding conversation.

Here we go with session number 146. Craig Siegel on mental toughness.

Yeah, I was, I, I had quit the corporate world. I was a Fortune 500 manager. And I hated it, and I wanted out bad, and the company offered a severance package to anyone who wanted to leave. They were downsizing, and I raised my hand to the ceiling and I took that money and I hired somebody to teach me internet marketing.

I wanted to learn how to do internet marketing and to cut to the chase working together, I created my first program, which is called Break 80 without. Which is, uh, something I sell even to this day. And it’s basically using the mind to play better golf, right? And it partly about my own story about how I broke 80.

For those who don’t know anything about golf, 80 is like the holy grail for your average golfer that you wanna score in the seventies somewhere breaking. And I had struggled for 30 years to do it myself. And then I discovered the mental game and this coach helped me create the program and I sold it, um, all over the world, um, within my first year of doing this.

And I’m like, Wow, this is crazy. And people were email me back saying, Craig, oh my goodness. You’re my, you’re my mental guru here for golf. I’m like, Really? I’m. Uh, trying to make some money online here, but apparently I put some good stuff out there and it was so funny. I was like, well, I’m not a sports psychologist.

What do I call myself? What? Uh, and I started going out honest. Gosh, Jason, I was just looking for like, you know what? I know this will help me sell the program. Let me see if I can get some letters after my name when I, when I sign emails. So I went on a little search discovered, oh, maybe NLP HYP now says that looks official.

C h t people. Put that a wonder what that design, . Not. No kidding. There is no shy. I’m dead serious. And so I was in Eastern Washington, middle and nowhere doing a little, uh, search for hypnosis. Uh, and found, um, a program that was being offered in the big city Seattle. And so I’ve said, All right, I’m in. I’ll do it.

I’m gonna go get my three letters after my. and it was, uh, just your basic three day intro course and I was hooked. Yeah. What I, what I love about that is just a simple honesty of, I, I’d share a similar through line that I, I was the stage hypnotist, but the thought was, well, if I had some letters after the name, I could probably charge more for my show.

And Yeah. You know, being the, uh, sort of smart at like stage hypnotist in one of my early trainings going, Yeah, I’m not really here for this, uh, therapy stuff. And yet, now, clearly it’s taken us both in different directions. Yeah. Yeah. So let me ask you this though, to, to, yeah. Look backwards at that. I, I chair.

What’s motivating this question would be that so often, you know, I’m someone who trains hypnosis nowadays, and here’s whether it’s the nurse, whether it’s the school teacher, whether it’s, um, you know, any sort of, let’s say, One to one service related industry. Um, they’d often go through that experience, whether it’s hypnosis or an lp, and they’d comment back to go, Yeah, I figured out that I was already doing a lot of this stuff, , yet now I was doing it intentionally and now I had better methods to do it.

To even go back to that original program you put out there. Yeah. You know, what, what was some of the content? What were some of the themes that were inside of there? You’re absolutely right. I was doing a lot of that without knowing it. Mm-hmm. and, um, it was, the program was part. Honest, gosh. Um, I went down my, my business coach at the time who was helping, said, Go down to the library, actually me back up.

He says, Craig, you know what makes an expert? Mind you, I have no expertise in golf. I’m just the guy who likes golf at the time. Mm-hmm. . He says, You know what makes an expert in anything? I go, What? Somebody who reads five books on a subject, you’re an expert, . Like, Okay, I can do that. So I went down to the library in this, in this small town that I lived in, and I got, oh, a dozen old, and they’re old books.

I’m not kidding you. They were like from the seventies and sixties and I just thumbed through them and looked for anything that, um, could be utilized by a golfer that did not require practic. And I just kind of jived it with my own experiences, cuz I had broken 80 through discovering the mental game kind of on accident.

Uh, that’s a whole nother story. But things like, back to your question, um, definitely visualization, but I took it to another level. Then what was usually taught by golf instructors? Visualize your swing and visualize the beautiful back swing and the ball and all this stuff. You know, Jack Nicholas, uh, it has to be a movie that you replay forwards and backwards and minute.

People can’t do that. Right? Right. Uh, and so I said this my coming from the corporate world, or it might be the strategy for a few. Yeah. Not a strategy for, for the, I’d say for the full population. You know, it’s where exactly at even point to, here’s a client of mine that was in the office so frustrated that his best friend changed his life because of the book Thinking Grow Rich.

And here he was struggling with that Napoleon Hill book and it came down to, but I just can’t harness that burning desire. And the answer had to be, Well, maybe burning desire is not your specific strategy. Maybe it’s something else. Right. Let’s, let’s see what yours is exactly. I mean, I was doing things like just some basic anchoring without knowing what it was.

I was, uh, lots of reframing without knowing what it was. Mm-hmm. . And, um, I did read this book, uh, in my own, my before. All this happened, It’s called the Power of the Subconscious Mind by, um, Murphy, Joseph Murphy. And so that was kind of running through my head as I was creating the program all before hypnosis.

So yeah, it was kinda interesting when I started taking official trainings go, Oh, that’s what that’s called, . Wow. There’s a name for that too. So yeah, I totally relate to that. Yeah. So then going through that, uh, training, what was the next step for you from there? Well, Completely hooked. It was a simple introductory to, What is that?

The, the guy, uh, starts with a k, he’s long time. I don’t think he’s alive anymore. Um, the folks in, in Hawaii, it was, it was hypnosis.com at the time. Oh, the K method. You know, just your basic benefit laden, um, direct suggestions thing. Mm-hmm. and I came out of that, the stories that my instructor told that just hooked me and.

Just don’t stop what’s next? Mm-hmm. when I signed up for their NLP practitioner from there. Yeah. Outstanding. So then were there more programs that then started to launch as a result of. , Um, or did it take a different, uh, take a different direction for you? Yeah, no, I, I, I went through practitioner training and I, that just wedded my appetite.

I went all the way through trainers training with the same company, um, met James and, and I like him. I still like him To this day was, it was a good experience for me. And, uh, all the while I’m basically turning my attention to marketing my golf program, and I created another golf program. . Um, but funny, uh, while here I’m trying to gain credibility and knowledge for myself to fit into this mental guru label that people are calling me and apparently I, they like my emails and my, you know, my, my stories and whatnot.

And I was learning good marketing for that, which is, by the way, 50% hypnosis. Mm-hmm. what is taught in marketing these days, as you know. And, uh, at some point, um, I, I, I just got this. This gut feeling that, and my gut communicates to me. I don’t know if like sometimes they say it’s God talking to me. That Greg, you gotta do this for people.

You gotta do this work. and like, what? And so I literally, while I’m trying to launch my programs, oh, I forgot. The other program I created while trying to create my own credibility was with a, um, a sports psychologist, . I got a guy to read a book by sports psychologist who I got permission from him to give him some exposure and maybe some small royalties.

So I wasn’t even believing my own credibility. I created another mental game. To, I look back on it and my stuff’s a hundred times better, and by the way, my stuff sold a hundred times better too. People aren’t really interested in sports psychology. They’re interested in solutions to their problem and their problem that I was presenting, the, the solution for it was, Hey, I can’t give better and I don’t have time to practice.

Well, there’s Craig and so that’s why that’s sold and yeah. Anyway, they’re on in the middle of nowhere. It’s a small town and I said, I gotta try this, I gotta do this. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t resist it. And my business coach, I went to my second business coach at the time, and I spent, I was in a year long program with them to learn copywriting and conversion for mm-hmm.

websites. And it was very expensive and he was amazing. Uh, but while I’m doing that, literally I’m walking the streets of this small town handing out flyers I posted for my budding new hypnosis NLP practice. Jason, I literally walked around the mall there. Yeah. With this flashy little electronic flashing thing, thing thing that says hypnosis works and passing out, um, uh, surveys to people, which lead them to.

You know, like a free consult with me later. Oh, I, I did all kinds of crazy stuff. I love that. There’s a, there’s a theme that’s popped up here from several people that, you know, the quote back to Michael Desal would be that, uh, you know, if you’re in your office in these early stages, you’re not working.

That’s right. That it’s about getting that message out there, and so good to hear that, especially, I mean, people look to some of the stuff that I share around Facebook marketing and online funnels and all that, but in terms of getting it up and running, just to be seen, just to be visible, to get that message out there.

Yep. What would you say? Walk a business street? Went into every single office. Uh, and, and retail. And just introduce myself saying, I’m opening a practice and here’s a flyer and yeah, , lot of network. What would you say? So, Well, but I, But you know what, Jason, I wanna put, since you’re on that end, for anybody who’s listen, I didn’t get a whole lot of clients from all this legwork I did.

Mm-hmm. . But I totally believe to this day that all this legwork, all this activity, I think it like, sends out a signal to the universe somehow. Uh, we could probably devolve into a quantum physics talk, but , I, I literally believe because I did all that work. It, it was like, God, the universe said, Okay, Craig’s serious.

Let, let’s steer him into some more effective. and boom, that then things started taking off. Well, there’s also something to be said though, that it’s that legwork that often trains what the next phase is gonna be, that you’re refining what that elevator peach pitch is. You’re refining exactly what that message is.

So by the time it, by the time it actually leads into something else, you know, it’s the old adage of the standup comedian who starts with the open mic and they’re getting up, and some nights it goes well, some nights it doesn’t, and they need to have that place where they can get up. Be bad at it sometimes before they can get up and actually rock it out and get the HBO special.

Then it goes to all these other different platforms. It’s gotta start somewhere. Absolutely. Yeah. You start learning, Hey, oh, that didn’t go over so well. Like the comedian. Wow. No clap on that. Let, let, Heck though. Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what I, And even if I didn’t, you know, Spec, uh, direct clients from a, a particular legwork activity.

At least I was able to see people’s reactions to things that I would say, just like you’re commuting, example, and Oh, maybe that goes over well and you’re right. Mm-hmm. and I started refining my messages, whether it was on the phone or in person or everywhere. Yeah. Got it. Got it. So then getting out there doing that leg work, what was it about the golf, uh, originally?

Was it your own backstory in terms of what you achieved that motivated. . Yes, absolutely. Yeah. This, I, I was an athlete my whole life. An undersized athlete, by the way. Mm-hmm. . So there was an undercurrent my entire life of having to, uh, uh, use my mind to overcome my lack of size and stature and, and, and, um, so this whole golf thing, that’s not really an issue.

Size isn’t an issue in. and I could not break the score of 80 for 20, 25 years. And it drove me insane. I mean, I literally took lessons. I, I read the books. I read, I got the magazines, I did the drills, and then I had this meltdown round after all that, I, I shot like 112, lost a dozen balls. I took my clubs and threw ’em in the corner of the garage.

It was like the end of the season fall. And I got, I’m, Screw it. I’m done with this golf. And then, and then over that winter, um, I ran into a couple books. One of ’em was called Super Learning and the other one is Psycho-Cybernetics. Yes. And I was just reading them from curiosity more than anything. And those got me really ignited toward the whole mental game and true story.

Um, I did not do any practicing, um, the next spring. Um, after maybe one or two rounds in my, I didn’t, you know, I came back, I picked the clubs back up and we went out to a, a weekend vacation in Central Oregon and I shot a 77 out of nowhere, , 25 years. I, I mean, I literally was using my mind to play golf and, and kind of implementing the things I read in these books and, and started the, you know, the mental game search.

And it was crazy. It’s like, what is going on? I shot a 77 on a full size course and I’m like, There’s some ma there some something’s Magic and I, You couldn’t stop me from then. Yeah, yeah. So without necessarily having to get into the entire detail of the programs that you do, what would you say was the biggest difference from that?

Throwing the clubs to that moment of being there and scoring So, or really scoring so low properly. Yeah. Yeah. . Okay. If I could boil it down into one most important concept, it is letting go of the need to control. Mm-hmm. . That’s it. And I got a little story to illustrate that, um, you know, I’d been teaching, uh, this stuff for like, I don’t know, five years or so, and, and asked, uh, email list of about 30,000 golfers at one point.

And my, my. Who at the time was, this is maybe five, six years ago, was trying for his own, um, golf greatness. I’d brainwashed him since he was three to be a golfer. And uh, he loved it. And he was in high school and I remember he was going into his senior year and it was in the beginning of the senior year, he was finally getting serious.

He was practicing. He joined a country club as a caddy. All this stuff, or cleanup boy. Anyway. He calls me up one day. I, you know, I had just finished a client and he goes, Dad, dad, dad, what’s up son? He goes, I’d finally get at what you’ve been trying to tell me all these years. What’s that son, ? And he goes, You know, dad, I, today, I played around and all I did was, I just looked at the spot that I wanted the, the ball to go.

And I said, Forget about my swinging for, And, and the ball just went there, . , I just laughed. That was so much fun for me. And then he ended up tearing it up that year. Um, he went to the state tournament and, uh, got a golf scholarship and played for a few years. So yeah, we still laugh about that. Yeah. Got it.

Got it. And it’s the, it’s the let go of control thing to answer your question again. Right? Right. So to let go of that control, what is it that the mind should be focused on?

One way to massively oversimplify everything. Aren’t think . Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, one way I teach that this in a simplified, uh, manner is if I could, if we had a a, a board, it would, uh, and it, I usually do this visually, but imagine I, I put a.at the bottom of a board and a.at the top of the board. Mm-hmm.

Right? And what athletes wanna do is go from dot. To TA dot B, whichever direction doesn’t matter. And right the, like most things in life, we want a straight line, meaning the most effective, most efficient way to achieve what we want. That the goal, the goal is the other dot, right? And so I draw a line, I say, Well, in sport it’s quite different, and I draw a.in the middle, but to the side.

So if you were to connect all three dots, it would be, uh, a, a, a triangle on its side. And I say this dot over here. This dot represents, uh, what sports psychology calls the flow. So your, you need to stop trying to get your goal. Your new goal is to play in the flow. My definition of that, uh, emanates from my foundational principle.

Performance equals potential minus interference. When you eliminate the interference, you performed your potential. That’s flow. So it seems like that is a longer route. And, and I’ll use the analogy, a hypnotic analogy when I’m teaching this about how. Um, I went on a trip once, uh, from Seattle here to Portland.

There’s a d there’s a direct way. Um, I’m sorry, they, No, there’s a place in the mountains we went to. There’s a direct way to go to the mountain, this place in the mountains, and, but it goes through, it goes through, um, dirt roads and you go like 10 miles an hour and you destroy your car. And, and, and I took it one way.

It’s like maybe 200 miles to go. This. But if you go the freeway way, which is way far around, you get there in half the time, even though it’s a like 50 miles. . And so that’s the same kind of thing that we need to do when we wanna achieve anything in sports. It’s don’t work towards achieving your goal. And that’s what’s brainwashed, especially into kids now.

Yes, That’s good advice. Everybody’s gotta work to achieve a goal, right. But the problem is it creates interference. They’re being able to perform to their potential. Namely, we’re talking about performance, anxiety and all kinds of other things like come up. So your. Is not work hard to achieve a goal because everybody’s doing that.

In the sports world, everybody’s doing that. And if you’re not, I mean you don’t even have a chance. But once you’re equal to everybody else, work hard to achieve your goal, then you need to go. My new goal now, Is achieve this flow state, which is basically just performing to your potential without interference.

The mental blocks that those of us in the hypno NLP world that we do every day with our clients, well there’s something even to be added to that, that, you know, being in that flow, which may be. My paraphrase of that I think might be that to actually be in the experience that, you know, here’s this athlete that yes, they may have a certain goal towards the end building up a certain speed and a and a pitch in baseball building up to I, I’m suddenly working with several power lifters working up to a certain level of strength.

Yeah. And unless they’re actually finding satisfaction and enjoyment on the journey towards that goal, that goal actually now gets further and further. , Absolutely. Some of them aren’t even, um, aware of the fact that that is part of the journey that enjoying, they’ve lost that since they first started.

They’re on this automaton path to get their program by their coaches and instructors, and they lose that, and that’s one of the things we have to bring back. Absolutely. Do you find that avoiding or somehow modifying the expectation of perfection comes into this? . Oh, absolutely. That’s just one of the interference patterns, right?

Mm-hmm. , What, why, Where do they get the perfection idea? Well, that’s the ultimate I need to control things, right? It’s, Well, if it’s the, it comes from the conclusion, if I can control everything and, and achieve perfection, then I won’t have failure, and all the bad things that come from. And the only way to do that is to control everything, which is a total fallacy.

It’s funny, one of the first things I do is say, so. All right. Let’s talk about things you feel like in your life that you think you can control. And no matter what they bring up, I, I destroy it. Yeah. Like one of the, the, you know, the most obvious ones is, Well, I feel like I’m in control when I drive my car.

Really? . So all these people who get into accidents all over the, the world, number one, uh, cause of death in our, in our country. I think something up there anyway. Oh, it’s all because these people got outta control, huh? Oh, huh. Well, uh, not, you know, it’s funny, so that’s one of the things I do is, is break apart.

You gotta start somewhere, right? Break apart their initial beliefs, their, their interference patterns, and then you can start installing some, some useful stuff. Yes. But I just, I cannot believe what, when I got into the sports world, how ingrained these beliefs are. Oh my goodness. It is. The brainwashing is unreal.

So do you find there’s any specific, um, nuances that need to be known if you’re working, let’s say, with the individual versus working with team? Yes. Uh, excellent question. So you need to understand that when you’re working with a team, uh, well, let me back up one second. My entire, um, uh, my entire business is built on the, on the, the fact that I only help people who.

Who are what I call on island A with an acute problem and they wanna get to island B where they don’t have their problem. Mm-hmm. and every single team has got 20% or so. That’s a wild guess, but let’s just say 20% of their players have an acute problem. They are not performing to their potential. They know it, coaches know it, parents know it.

Those are my clients. And when you go to a. . So let’s say there’s 15 people there. You’re doing a workshop or or a talk for a team. So there’s only three or four of them that really are having any kind of problems. So how do you get the others nine or 10 of ’em to even pay attention to you and to throw in?

Yeah, to throw in one little other nuance to that, cuz I’ve had the same dialogue. At one point when I was going into a business and talking to their sales staff, that they pointed out that only about 20% really is gonna need the actual effort. Um, that’s correct. But even on top of that, their top 20% was producing more than the old 80 20 adage about 20% of the staff there was actually producing about 80% of the sales.

Yeah. So that’s typical what they were bringing up was that okay, if you can get these top performers to do slightly better, that’s great, but if you could bring these sort of moderate performers, they. Use the, the term low performers, cuz they still were producing sales. But if you can get them to maybe, you know, bump their numbers up slightly, this will more than pay for itself.

But I love that absolutely. Bringing that into the concept of, uh, sports too. . Oh yeah, absolutely. So yeah, you’re, that’s how you sell to coaches. What if your bottom 20% moved up to at least the middle, right? Mm-hmm. . Cause yeah, they, that’s a, that’s an old adage in sports, you’re only as good as your, you know, your worst players on the, on the field, the weakest link.

You hear that all the time in the sports world. Um, but I also wanted to make my talks and my workshops useful and beneficial, even for the top. And that’s quite a trick. Uh, and the way you do that is you help them understand the problems that they are having that they’re not even aware of. And you just start off with, So here, like if I was doing a workshop, I would, So who here, let’s say you got 15 teen girls in front of me and say, who here always plays as good as their best game in competition?

who always, who always brings their best game to competition? Always, you know, no, nobody’s hand goes up. Now I can. Continue the selling process of, you know, this is why you need to listen to me because I’m What if you could, you know, So one thing I tell all my students, uh, who are who work with athletes is you’ve got to, in the sports world, you’ve got to sell people.

On the mental game. Mm-hmm. , you have to do a continuous cell job and you have to connect back what you are teaching back to their self-interest in their ultimate performance. You can’t just say, you know, this will be good for you, it’s gonna help you. And their guys are glazing over and they’re like, Oh, okay, whatever.

And maybe they’re really nice kids and the repeat like, parrots back to you and you, Oh, thank you Eric. It’s all good. Everybody goes in and nothing happens. Mm-hmm. Right now you’ve gotta sell. Can you understand, based on what I said, how what I just taught you is going to improve your performance? Maybe I get a bunch of head nods.

Sure. Yeah. Okay. You, you tell me how it is. So this is what I, when I, when I teach and I tell all my students, check for integration. Mm-hmm. , check to see if people understand what you’re doing. See if they can spit it back to you, uh, in a way that tells you that they understand it more than just, you know, parroting back your.

So I’m curious to ask how physical does the work actually get in terms of working with that mental aspect? How much of it gets into that hand on, hands on aspect of it versus let’s say, the traditional expectation of hypnosis session of they’re sitting in a comfortable chair with their eyes closed?

Yeah. Yeah. I keep talking. Tell me more about your, I’m not sure about what you, Yeah, I’m curious cuz it’s where over the years I can give you reference, I’ll put it a different category for Obama. Yeah. I’m working with a concert violinist at one point who on his own was reading several books on nlp, getting a little frustrated that he could not do it himself.

And that’s where he did some research and picked up the phone and found himself in my office. And it’s like our, the end of the story is more entertaining than the intro actually , but it’s where he, uh, There it is, second or third of play, but he goes, So two things. There’s an instrument in my car, which is worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Is it okay if I bring it inside? It’d like, Yeah, of course. Go ahead. Oh, by the way, I read about anchoring. Could you anchor my confidence to the moment where I’m getting the violin in position? It’s like, Yes, let’s do that. And that suddenly became a big part of our process, which he then played something in the office and we’re getting in that position as soon as the physical moment of, And for him, it’s that little moment that I still nerd out over of, uh, the violinist then suddenly balanced and squeezed between their chin and their upper shoulder.

Yeah. And it looks like they’re just letting it float. It’s like, No, that’s a $400,000 instrument. Don’t drop it. . He briefly plays it, which of course leads. , the two of us walking out the end of his appointment and the next client is waiting in the lobby. And all I can think to say is, and what, how are you going to entertain me?

Um, . So actually taking the physicality of applying these hypnotic principles, these, you know, these, these concepts to the actual physical nature of what they’re going to be doing. I see. Yeah. So occasionally over the years I would have an athlete bring in a piece of their equipment mm-hmm. for anchoring purposes and, and yeah.

Um, but for the most part in the last, uh, five years or so, um, I don’t do a whole lot of any kind of physical stuff anymore. One thing, um, I discovered. I, I, I might be a little out there compared to most hip therapists and I peers in that I have a much more fluid, flexible definition of hypnosis. Mm-hmm.

where it’s kind of like, I don’t know, some people call it, you know, conversational hypnosis and, and I do a lot of not so official type interventions. Yes. And I’m more of a, like, I developed this process and it, and it’s a sequence I. Uh, athletes through, and it’s based on my philosophy, race, relentless awareness, clear and emotional mastery.

And, um, relentless is not like, uh, most people talk about in sports. It’s, you’ll appreciate this as, as everybody, it’s belief in your ability to change a nervous system. Um, A is awareness and that supports the relentless. So I do a lot of helping my clients understand how they operate and not just writing in a, a pre-talk in the beginning.

I keep it going all throughout. I’m constantly referring back to, all right, so is this your conscious? Is that your unconscious that’s bringing up? Where did that come from? They are learning literally how to be their own best mental coach. Mm-hmm. don’t, I don’t let my clients just be passive. Craig’s gonna zap ’em,

It is far more. And that’s why these days and, and since I started really specializing in sports, called myself a trainer. And the other part of that is in some, um, places, uh, and on my mental toughest, uh, trainer website, I don’t use the word hypnosis anywhere, is it is still in lots of places all over the world.

You use the word hypnosis, you’re gonna get kicked out in the sports world. Mm-hmm. . So I’m a little bit more fluid. And don’t do such, um, like I used to as much and I just kind of, uh, I assume a lot of hypnosis, I teach them, Well, here’s how we’re gonna get it in your unconscious. Just like I told you. You know how to do that.

Yeah. You remember how we did that? Yeah. You did it before, right? Yeah. Cool. You’re gonna do it again? Yeah. What’s gonna make it happen for you again? Oh, because I did it last time and I just thought this way. Cool. Use that again. That’s gonna work. Right on. Good. I’ll just send you a guided visualization when I’m done.

Mm-hmm. . Cool. Cool. Bye. Nice. You know, so I’m an efficiency fanatic and I was always, What is the essence? Well, let’s boil down the essence of, of things. What, what and, and what’s the essence of change? And I came up with a four step, um, mechanism, I believe that fits into my race philosophy. And step one is identify the interference, right?

We do this, we can do it in hypno analysis, we can do, but I’ve been over time in sports. There’s a handful of these. Um, interfering belief patterns that come up over and over and over when you see the telltale signs. You got it. Two is antidote. Come up with the right antidote for that belief program.

Three is delivered to the unconscious. That’s the hypnosis part, which I explained earlier is kind of flexible and fluid. Um, and four is condition. . So these are concepts, uh, other than step three against the unconscious that they’re already kind of familiar with. And I just learn, They taught me how to work within these athletes, how to work within their world and what they’re used to.

And that’s what I found to be really efficient. Yeah. Is there one specific sport that you find yourself working with more than anything else? Um, you know, what, what comes to mind? You might couple come to mind. You know what I would say number one is probably basketball. Mm-hmm. and surprisingly, um, gymnastics.

And cheerleading, I’d say nearly um, 80% of the athletes that I see in this area are gymnastics and cheerleading in the classic, uh, fear of flipping. They used to be able to flip backwards. Then suddenly something happens, and now they’re in my office because they can’t flip back. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I joke all the time.

If I wanted to work with eight to 18 year old girls for the rest of my life, I could make a a good living on that alone. There’s so many of ’em. Every gym has got girls blocking on their back, Tumbling every gym. Yeah. On planet right now. And these girls go home crying. Be, and it destroys the family life.

And mom and dad will pay anything to get ’em out. So let’s, uh, let’s set the audience aside for a moment and let’s just talk my benefit. What are some of the strategies that you found to be, uh, some of the most effective, or what are some of the blocks that, you know, need to be aware of in terms of that specific category?

Sure. Uh, you mean gymnastics and generating back? Exactly. Exactly. Yes. So, uh, Okay. Boil it down. Boil it down. Cause I can talk for an hour on this. Mm-hmm. , um, boil it down. So I would say, Okay, here we go. Here we go. When, when one of them comes in,

Okay, how, how about this? How about this? I could go so many different directions. So I, over time in working with these girls, you know, I, in the beginning it was hit and miss, try this technique, try this intervention, and sometimes the work and sometimes it wouldn’t. Right? And my brain is always, even when things.

Uh, you know, I know lots of people when things work they go, Ah, I’m great. That’s amazing. I would go, Why did that work? Mm-hmm. , why did that work? What did I do? Right? You know, of course everybody does it. When, why didn’t that work? We go analyze well over time, and it just came from doing a ton of these. I found out, you know what it is, Jason, that really, uh, causes these girls’ problems is I use the analogy, I call it the stress glass, and I draw it for them.

In session one, I say, Here’s the deal, just to simplify. I said, You’re un, I, I explained to them they got a conscious and unconscious. If it’s little kid, they call it the power mind and the thinking mind and say, Here’s the deal. Your unconscious mind’s job is to run your body. It does not care about your happiness.

It does not care about your gymnastics. It doesn’t care about anything, but keeping you alive, first and foremost, and, and operating on planets. Now, one of its biggest enemies to doing that is stress. Stress in all its forms. And then I draw a glass on the whiteboard. I, I like to do visuals for. And I say, you know, I, this is what we’re gonna call the stress glass, and here’s the deal.

You know, we wake up in the morning and then I draw, you know, a level of liquid that’s about half full on the stress class. They say, you know, we wake up in the morning, then we have about this much stress and, uh, we can handle it. You know, we’re equipped to handle a lot of stress in our life. You know, even if I’m talking a nine year old, they got, you know, the stress of fitting in, the stress of doing what their parents want, the stress of getting to the next level in gymnastics.

All this stuff, right? Academics. I say, Here’s the. When the stress glass gets near the top, when it starts approaching the top, that’s when your unconscious mind gets really angry. Mm-hmm. and it says, You know what? This, this person is, we, we cannot run the body with the stress hormones and chemicals being kicked around this bo in.

I can’t run the immune system very well. I can’t do all the things I’m supposed to do. And so, you know what? We gotta lower the. For her. And so I’m gonna create this problem and the thing that’s, that’s least, um, necessary in her life. And guess what that is? Yeah. Gymnastics. And so they all come in thinking it’s, Oh, I’m afraid I’m gonna fall and break my neck.

And that’s definitely a part of the stress class. But it’s, once you help them understand that, then you spend the rest of your time lowering the stress. and you connect and they go, Oh, and they’ll buy into it. And I believe it’s true. When I first , when I first, uh, um, identified this pattern, I went, Gosh, well, let’s try this.

Let’s threw it out there, you know? And, um, I didn’t know what I was talking about. I was just surmising, I just guessed it. But every time I bring it up and, and they have no other alternative but to believe it. So, to, to this day, I don’t know if it’s total placebo or I’m totally right, but my gosh, it’ll.

And as you do an intervention, you show ’em, Hey, think that stress glass went down right there. Oh yeah. Well that’s what your unconscious mind is gonna start releasing this. And the only, the only thing we don’t know is how long it’s going to take. And sometimes the unconscious mind, you know, we talk about it like it’s our partner.

It’s like I heard a little friend there, right? And sometimes it doesn’t know, uh, if you’re serious or not. If it thinks you’re just doing this temporarily and the stress is gonna come right back, it, it’s not gonna let go of this problem. What I’m loving about this is that, uh, there’s a through line that you, you talk stress class.

For years I’ve been talking about, okay, so here’s a grandfather clock with the swinging pendulum. And you know, if the clock is, uh, tilted, if the floor isn’t level, it’s swinging too far in the stress direction. And if all we did today was just simply take some of these stress levels down, you know, so it’s where, yes, we’re here to address this sport, but also to take down the stress at home, to take this down in school, to take it down everywhere else.

And that’s just gonna level out that floor and you’re just gonna naturally find this thing working better for you. Same, same, same idea, different um, different metaphor. Yeah. I love that. Which is great about that cuz it brings in the theme that, , you know those people in this audience who I’m sure you know, don’t work with a lot of athletes though, it’s the classic strategy of, especially if you’re working with the teenager and the parents are bringing them in for this one specific thing.

And it probably is the, uh, the test anxieties, the getting the homework done, and it’s clearly something that mom and dad have a little bit more of a goal towards. The kids definitely interested yet to find that little bit of a through line to go, well, you know, how’s everything else going? What else are you into?

And often a sport will pop up and this is where I pull on the tongue and cheek moment of, well, you know, I have to mention that there’s a bit of a side effect to what we’ll do today, that as you finding better focus involving school, you’ll find that focus naturally kind of pops up in other places. So is it okay if you also find your basketball game improves while we’re doing this

Yeah. And at that point I’ve got a fan for life and we’re on. Right, Which it’s the same concept, but now we’re using that again. I love what you mentioned about having to sell the process even as you’re doing it. Yes. They’re in the office, they’re with you. This is, especially if you’re teaching a technique, that’s a great strategy for getting compliance, cuz now they actually understand it.

Yep. And they’re actually going to do it too. A in my race formula awareness. Yep. It’s constant. It’s not just a one time deal. That’s what I think a lot of new practitioners, uh, miss the boat on. Mm-hmm. , you’ve gotta continually sell, continually connect up, uh, what you’re doing to their eventual outcome.

Otherwise you’ll lose ’em. Yeah. Otherwise, they’ll learn a strategy, They’ll feel slightly better and just settle at that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like, like Craig, how does us talking about, um, you know, the sadness I experienced from my grandfather dying last year have anything to do with my, my tumbling moves.

Well, let’s go into that and if, and if they have that question, I haven’t done a very good job and I need to go back over and I need to get it where they can tell, This girl can tell me. Connects up to her tumbling moves. Mm-hmm. and her, uh, not having fully resolved that issue has, you know, kept the stress glass up high, for example.

Got it, got it. So how is it that you spend most of your time these days? Most of my time these days is either managing my online programs that I sell to the mass public for, uh, the different demographics I learned. Uh, being the mental trainer that, uh, you got, you got coaches, you got parents, you got young athletes, you got older athletes, uh, adults, and you also got people that have come to me that are not interested in sports at all, but just wanna learn some mental toughness for personal life.

And so I’ve been creating all kinds of programs to tailor for each one of ’em using all my. Concepts, and that’s about 50% of what I do. The other 50% is I train people how to specialize and or add to their practice to, to work with athletes and performers. Yeah. So let, let’s backtrack there for a moment.

Cause I wanna talk these programs in a moment too, that as you’re working with people in this sort of peak performance category, uh, what other things are coming in, in that, in that respect? Would you say it’s like the public speaking or what? , I’ve never been a public speaker. I, I can do it. Um, it doesn’t, it’s fine.

It’s just not my thing. I usually have to get cajoled into it and pushed. I’m kind of an introvert. I like hanging out at home and being on the computer and, and small groups and, uh, so speaking and, and that has not been my thing. Mm-hmm. , uh, but I’m fascinated with, um, the psychology of conversion, whether it’s online or in person or whatever.

So that’s what gets me jazzed. Oh, I meant in terms of clients coming. Oh, I, I only see people who are in my program for their own personal blocks about doing this kind of work with athletes. Mm-hmm. or an occasional past client, um, uh, that comes in for a tuneup I’ve seen years ago. Like if somebody calls and says, I want you to work with my 15 year old, I’m gonna turn ’em over to one of my students and give ’em that client.

Yeah. Outstanding. Outstanding. Out. Too expensive these days, . It’s a good problem to have. Yep. Yeah. So where can, uh, where can people find out more about you? They can go to mental toughness trainer.biz. Outstanding. And for the hypnotist who’s, uh, curious in working with more athletes, what would you recommend as a, as a next possible step?

Uh, yeah, that’s the site that will lead, lead them, uh, give ’em all kinds of info along that mental toughness trainer.biz. My, uh, my original side is.com, mental toughness trainer.com. That’s where I got all this stuff for the athletes themselves. But I’m assuming, uh, we got lots of NLP and Hypnos who might be interested in, uh, mentoring under me for learning how to work with athletes.

So, uh, that’s where they. Awesome, and we’ll put links to that over in the show notes [email protected]. And Craig, it’s been awesome having you on. Thank you so much. You asked the best questions, my man. Um, the, the side notice I’ve often admitted on this program that, uh, there happens to be an audience.

These often are capturing conversations that I just want to have myself. So this has been a pleasure. Nice. Yeah. Thank you. I love your questions.

Jason. Lynette here, and as always, thank you so much for subscribing to this program, sharing it with. Fellow hypnotists and I’d encourage you to head over to hypnotic workers.com. You can join that growing online community for as little as $47 and get that all access passed to my hypnotherapy training library Techniques for working with kids.

Techniques for working with athletes, as well as, uh, real client sessions for weight loss. Stop smoking, just a whole lot of content so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel and see what’s actually working. Now in terms of my actual client sessions, check it out. Hypnotic workers.com. See on the inside.

Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.