Session #150: Igor Ledochowski on Calibrating the Hypnotic Journey

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 150, Igor Ledowski on calibrating the Hypnotic journey. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Lynette, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Lynette. Break out the party hats.

It’s session number 150 of the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, series number 150. Episode number one came out about. Three and a half years ago. Uh, session number one was all about my all positive pre-talk and, uh, that actually came out on June 25th, 2014. And here we go three and a half years later with number 150 coming out on February 8th, 2018.

So first of all, a huge thank you to everybody who’s been a guest on this program. All of you who have left reviews for it online shared the content. To date, we’ve been downloaded more than 200,000 times all around the world, uh, and very much a big part in terms of bringing people into my online communities that I run the invite to speak at many hypnosis conventions, even giving the keynote at several of them in 2017.

But stick around. We got even more cool stuff coming your way, and there’s been a theme of setting benchmarks and, uh, sort of changing up the. In terms of how we do things, the origin story behind the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast really dates back to what I believe was a line out of, uh, Vaudeville entertainment.

That the amateur changes their act, the professional changes their audience. So there’s the theme of thinking bigger, reaching out to new audiences in a brand new way. That the hypnotic profession is one that used to clinging to the statement that you really have to be in the room for it to be effective, whether it’s working with a client, whether it’s being the student in the class, when looking at the landscape of our hypnotic profession in 2018.

There. There’s times where I’m here in my office where I’m currently recording, and yes, I’m speaking to you, some of you are all around the world, but by the wonders of the little camera on my laptop, interacting with a client, the other side of the world as well, producing that change in a very, very remote distance inside of my programs, hypnotic business systems, hypnotic workers, that there’s people inside of there in countries that I haven’t even traveled to and we haven’t yet met in person.

And this is not to say that the model of the live training or especially the hypnotic convention is going away. No, it’s absolutely not. But it’s this benefit that we get to cultivate that relationship. We get to build that knowledge in a much more direct way to then take our skills to even greater levels.

So it’s why I’ve specifically calibrated and, uh, changed around the order of some recordings to make it a point to have none other than Igor Ledowski on here for session number 151 of those people who’s been a true pioneer of taking hypnosis and NLP and all of our related skills out to a much bigger audience.

So this whole concept that the world has become a whole lot smaller, uh, my first interaction with Igor actually came about probably the same way that many of you first interacted with him as well, by way of a product. So purchasing some sort of CD series or DVD series, and just the amount of content, the amount of information, and just the quality of training that’s inside of it.

I’d be very open and inspired A lot of what I do, which the story here is that he and I first met in person back at Hypno Thoughts 2016 out in Vegas, and then a few months later getting a rather polite email from someone on his staff. As he does a series of interviews called the Hypnosis Masters Interview Series, and back in January, 2018, I had the great honor of being invited to be a part of that program.

We recorded three specific interviews, one on my backstory, one on my business approach, one on my hypnotherapy approach, and, uh, stick around cuz I’m gonna give you some details in terms of how you can get that full three, maybe four plus hours of recording. Uh, the first segment of it is for free on his website, hypnosis training academy.com.

Though I’ve got permission to share the entire thing with you, and I’ll give you the details here in a moment. In this conversation with Igor, we actually rewind the story back in terms of how he first got interested in hypnosis, of looking at it as that kind of Jedi mind trick, and then realizing that this is a thing that actually can be learned and a thing that can actually be, uh, perfected and built within a skill.

And then of course, Shared with others. So you’re gonna hear some rather interesting nuances, of course, to how we interact with our clients. And I’d share, you’re gonna hear the anecdote that there’s always the game. As I’m having these conversations with fellow people in my, uh, community here, uh, we’re looking for a title.

Um, and he may have, uh, self selected. The title, first draft of Igor Shuts up about hypnosis, which instead we changed it to be Igor Ledowski on Calibrating the Hypnotic Journey. So inside of that, there’s some incredible stories. There’s some incredible metaphors. And listen through this conversation just to really pick up the importance of silence in your process.

Letting the change process sit, letting the client really have that moment where they can kinesthetically, uh, neurologically, whatever model of work we wanna bring into it, the client can feel the changes in motion. And allow themselves to fill in the gaps in terms of what’s happening. So to really compound this theme of calibrating the hypnotic journey, we talk about everything from, uh, fitness to magic, to again, that power of silence inside of the process.

Of course, to check out more from Igor, head over to hypnosis training academy.com. And, uh, that three part series that he and I did together within his Hypnosis Master’s interview series will make it easy on you if you go over to Work Smart Hypnosis. Dot com slash Igor, I G o r head over there. That’ll redirect over to a page where you can request all three of those, uh, recordings where again, it’s more than four hours of content where we deep dive into some of my strategies, Though this session is specifically about.

Igor, and again, a huge thank you once again to everybody who’s been a part of this program up until now, because it’s all about increasing that reach, and that’s why I’m also so excited to invite you to join me in LA in August in, uh, Las Vegas 2018 for hypnotic. Products. This is a two day business course, specifically for hypnotist, Appropriate for all levels of skills where it’s a hands on live interactive course where you’re gonna learn the mechanisms to actually create your own hypnotic products.

So it’s not just about creating that single use audio program that can maybe sell on a website for 20 or 30 bucks. We’re talking about building entire systems, much more thorough programs that build a greater level of compliance with your clients and build even greater levels of success. So whether it’s creating wellness products for the general community, or perhaps you’re a fellow instructor and you want to share your knowledge with an even larger audience, Hypnotic Products was a sellout event at Hypno.

Thoughts Live 2017. Back by top popular demand. We’re doing it again. Hypno Thoughts. Live 2018 right after the convention, Tuesday and Wednesday, August 28th and 29th. Get all the details. Reserve your spot [email protected]. And with that, here we go. Session number 150 of the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast.

Thanks for joining me, Igor Ledowski on calibrating the hypnotic journey.

Clearly every one of us wakes up when we’re first born and decides I want to be a hypnotist. So what was that original introduction for you? How was it you first encountered hypnosis? Well, I think there’s this, there’s two, there’s, there’s a handful of, of different events that kind of accumulated. The first one was I think my fir very first exposure d hypnosis, I’m must been about three or four years old.

And it was like a, a state in Spain. And, uh, he did the classic, you know, x-ray vision, glasses and all the, the, the standards nowadays, of course. And I was just blown away by, by what this thing is, and I didn’t even know what it was. It looked like magic to me. I was four years old after all. Right. And, uh, I think shortly afterwards the, the.

All the Star Wars movies started coming out and this whole idea of, uh, these are not the droids you’re looking for. Once again, it just captured my imagination. And I went, That’s amazing. And of course I put all that idea, those ideas aside for a longer time. At that point, I didn’t think that was any, I thought it was just a, um, uh, TV show type thing.

Right. And, and that’s something very interesting thing that happened. Um, I’ve always been interested in the kind of the bow of the mind and meditation stuff like that in general. I think the martial arts background led me towards that. But then in the 19, gosh, I think it’d be 1980s, uh, heist in the UK called Paul McKenna, started doing a regular weekly broadcast of a stage hypnosis show.

So every week it’s a brand new show, brand new material, and it ran for a number of years. And it was, it was just, I was just blown away by that again. And, uh, I think that’s really when the, the seed started taking root, because before I was too young, I just thought it was just, you know, uh, fantasy stuff, you know, like, uh, Santa Claus or whatever else.

Of course, it fired up my imagination initially, but after a while I let go of it. But then this weekly show where I saw this happening over and over and over again, and all the crazy antics people got up to it really got me thinking, you know, if this is possible, what else could be possible? And I think that’s the question that’s really, uh, driven me throughout the years is what else can be possible.

So, so this weekly show that Paul McKenna was doing on tv, I think that’s the bit where it really started to blossom in my mind. And the reason for it is I was older now, I was in my teens, and I got, you know, fascinated by this. And the question that kept coming back to me was, um, if, if this is possible, if you, if you’ve even seen this every week, What else could be possible?

Now, I’m not much of a stage of notice. It’s not, uh, uh, the career I’ve decided to pursue is not the main interest that I have. It’s more, as, you know, the idea of hypnosis in everyday life. That’s the thing that really interests me. Um, but that, that, that initial spark took the idea of hypnosis out of a child like, uh, mindset, I’d really gauge the same place as, uh, you know, Santa Claus and, and the Easter Bunny.

Um, but seeing that show every week started to get me to question that and say, Listen, there’s something, must be something going on here and I wonder what it is, and I wonder what else could be possible with it. And I think that would be the, the period in which I started to re rekindle my hyn. And then decided to, to buy books and, and get hold of whatever, uh, materials you could get hold of in the UK at the time.

Which by the way, the time was very difficult to get hold of stuff. Um, and that slowly started my, my journey into hypnosis. Yeah. So I love that in terms of first that interaction, which I’m having to smile and crack up in some wonderful way that my children right now at four and six years old are obsessed with this, uh, movie of, uh, sort of a comic book of, uh, Captain Underpants.

Okay. Where there’s this wonderful subplot and I still haven’t seen the movie yet, Right. Uh, but there’s some sub plot that these kids are hypnotizing their teacher. Okay. Um, so I’m having to wonder if, you know, 17, 18 years from now, suddenly we’re gonna have another renaissance of hypnosis as a result of that

But, but you’ll tell, you can tell these hypnotists cuz they’re all wear the underpants outside or. They’re, um, regular pants. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Now, where did you grow up? So I grew up in part in Spain, and then later on about seven years, uh, later on, uh, we moved to England and I grew up mostly in London at that point.

Hence my, uh mm-hmm. English accent. Yeah. So what, what was the track that you were gonna be on until the hypnosis sort of renaissance and resurfaced? Right. Well, I think, you know, as most kids, I didn’t really have a track when I started, uh, offered school and all the rest of it. And, and then towards the time of choice, you know, when you have to start choosing universities and so on.

Um, I, I, I, I was split in three different directions. Um, the one track was law. I loved the, the clarity, the legal argumentation, the um, the thought experiments and, and the logic inside of it. It’s a, it felt a lot like a puzzle to me. So the law was won a branch. The next branch was philosophy. I really enjoyed the idea of philosophy
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Um, and then the third one was psychology. Of the three I ended up then, of course, at age, you know, 16, 17, 18, when you signed to make these choices, you have no idea about what any of these things actually mean. It’s a kind of a crazy system to, uh, choose what you’re gonna dedicate your life to at a point in time where you don’t know what life is about.

So, uh, you kinda make random choices, right? Um, I chose law mostly because, um, I think you had my options open with a law degree. I figured you could go into most things. Um, philosophy was a bit of obscure. I thoughtful people and psychology kind of locked you into one particular track, and in some ways I’m glad I did this because, um, I think laws taught me a lot about clear thinking about, uh, hearing the BS in people’s.

Uh, you know, about the, uh, following a line of logic through to its conclusion and, and flushing out in consistencies. And I think that’s very useful. Hypnosis, which is prone to a lot of mysticism. So that was a very useful, um, uh, training to have had. Um, I also did a kind of a, a, um, a, a minor in psychology.

In the first year. You had to choose a. A, um, non-legal subject to kind of round off your education, and I was so appalled by the quality of psychology and its training and, and and what, uh, you know, the, the standard was at the time. I remember this is early 1990s, that I was. I was so happy to rededicate myself to being a lawyer at that point.

It just, I decided that was not for me. Um, the one regret I do have though is if I could go back in time, I would, might do something different. I might actually look for a really good philosophy course. Cause I think a good philosophy course does everything that a good law course did for me, but then some, the thing that Lord didn’t do for me, which I think a good philosophy course would do, And by the way, by a good philosophy course, I don’t.

Modern academic philosophy, which, which concerns itself with obs, obscure argumentation and, and, uh, extremely tiny areas of, of study. Like, you know, moral judgment, stuff like that. Not that that’s necessarily bad, I’m talking about a more general program like they have in the US in, um, um, St. John’s College in Annapolis, which is very old school philosophy, uh, where you debate your way through to reasoning very much using the dialectic process of Socrates to learn how to live, to, to have a sense of a lifestyle, um, which is much more important than learning how to make a living, right?

Mm-hmm. . And, uh, the reason I say that is because I think that’s the closest to hypnosis that we have. It’s, it’s a way of looking at the world, which changes the way you behave in the world, be and, uh, uh, and hopefully in the direction of greater. And success in whatever way you define those things. And, and that’s a, um, you know, that’s a thing that hindsight, uh, has taught me.

But of course, with, uh, without that, uh, foresight at the age of 16, 17, I think the legal track was a decent one. A lot, a lot of things from it. Uh, but as I say, that would be, would it be, I think, a much stronger track to follow? Although, ironically, I think most people wouldn’t know about it. I think they, they, uh, they, as I did at the time, dismiss, uh, philosophy.

It’s just so much, um, hot air being spouted. Uh, and I think that’s true if you don’t believe in what you’re talking about. But as soon as you start to actually try and investigate what means, what truth means to you, what life means to you, I think then it has a chance to actually. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. And this, uh, we have a tendency to jump around quite a bit here, and this seems like one of those, uh, wrap up questions we would probably ask about an hour from now, . This, this, this could fit into the context of hypnosis. This could fit into the context of just living in this world. Um, and I’ll ask it as a, uh, either a one or a two-parter.

Sure. Which would be that, uh, what’s something you used to believe but now you don’t? Or flip it the way? What’s something that you used to not believe, but now you do? Oh gosh, no. That’s a hard, Yeah. Let’s put that in the context of hypnosis for this. Yeah. Even there, it’s hard because, um, it’s, I mean, let’s, let’s think of it this way.

Um, I think in terms of what I used to believe, uh, I used to believe that hypnosis was magic. I mean, I got into it relatively young again. Uh, remember I was in my teens when I got reinspired and started learning things on, on the slide, on the, on the wayside. And, uh, And then, and, and, and you know, part of the foolishness of the young is, uh, that they think anything’s possible.

Right? Which is great. It’s so, it’s, I I’m not regret having had that mindset because it got me to take risks I would never otherwise have taken. And as a result of my failures from those risks, I learned a lot of important lessons I would otherwise not have learned, I think. Um, so, so, so the idea that hypnosis are limits and the limits really are, uh, inside of the human mind, I think those limits are a lot broader than most people give ourselves, you know, give people credit for.

Um, but we do, or we are subject to physical limitations. And I’ll give you classic example. You know, I, I fell into the trap of the whole mind of a matter thing that, uh, you know, if your mind was in the right place, that doesn’t matter what you do with your body, everything would work out just fine. Uh, which once again goes into the, the hubris of the young who feel indestructible, right?

Um, and of course my thinking has changed a lot since then. I think now that my body is part of my mind and my body suffers. It drains me mentally sufficiently that, um, you know, I can’t do the mental things as easily anymore otherwise, uh, you know, doing things like exercise is a good thing because it not only keeps your body healthy and stronger for longer, but actually keeps your mind in a healthier, uh, stronger state as well.

And we have tons of research for that now. So that’s, that’s the, uh, used to believe but is no longer true side and the side of what’s not true. But, um, I now believe in, in terms of hypnosis what we go with this one. Um, okay, so, so here’s one for you. And this is, this is a simple one. This is the as if or pretend frame when I first came across the idea that, you know, you can pretend to be in trance and then, and then, or ask, ask ’em to pretend to be in trance.

And then they, they will basically act out exactly as though they were in trance. That didn’t make sense to me at the time. You know, this whole idea of make believe like a little child and so on seemed, uh, silly that didn’t think there’s something. Anything really going on there. And, and I, I’ve come, uh, 180 on that idea.

Now, I think, I think that, um, uh, people can act as if, imagine, pretend something to be true and then if they do it in the right way, and that there is a, there is a, um, there’s a sweet spot that we say of, of this cup pretending, um, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. In other words, it becomes true over time.

Um, and what I mean by a sweet spot is this, there is a big difference between a self delusion and a self fulfilling prophecy. . There’s a huge difference in terms of outcome, but actually there’s a very narrow gap that separates two, if that makes sense. So you could have something that starts as a self illusion, that then becomes a self fulfilling prophe.

Um, or you could have something that starts a selfing prophecy, but then you start getting into buying your own hype and, and narcissism, whatever you’re gonna call it, and then slowly that, uh, derails into a delusion. And, and the crossover point is not always easy to tell, but I think it’s a very important thing to realize.

Uh, a lot of people avoid dreaming big because they’re afraid of delusional aspects of it. I think, um, at least the way I would phrase it, I’m sure, I’m sure that they would talk about it in these terms. They just think it’s not possible or something like that. Um, but really, if they had a sense of the difference between.

When a self illusion becomes self-fulfilling, then because it becomes a nice hobby, a nice game you can play with yourself and just see where it takes you. And I think the key of not getting too attached is important, but at the same time, part of the, the, the, the importance is, um, interfacing with consensual reality.

I, that’s a big thing that delusional people don’t do. They try and, um, ignore consensual reality and any feedback they get just goes, just disappears. Um, whereas someone who’s running a self feeling prophecy learns. Uh, from that feedback loop and adapt either their behavior slightly or maybe tweaks their, their dreams slightly so that it’s something that can be expressed in the world.

Does that kinda make sense to you? No, that does, And I, I’d shared, that’s actually a bit of thought that I’ve been playing with over the last month or two myself, that, you know, even looking at, okay, let’s look at this as the entry to the hypnotic conduction, which I, I, I can comfortably say from the trainings that I went through, from the books I read in the early days, I thankfully never had to deal with the, uh, the fear of what if I can’t hypnotize them?

Cuz I was trained by people who just worked from the pre opposition that if you’re that’s nice with me, you’re gonna want to be there. Yeah. So this was a, a virus and never really took on yet. So the concept of the, Oh, if someone is nervous about the hypnosis, you could have them pretend, was this routine that I never played.

And yet in recent years, the the thought being, uh, there’s a fine line between, uh, fake it till you make it, as well as, uh, fooling with neurology, which really comes down to, if we’re looking at it in terms of an induction, a way to get into hypnosis. It’s just the beauty of, you know, one indirect suggestion after the other that I, I don’t have to tell you this and that yet.

This is already happening. I don’t have to tell you that. And yet it’s already happening, which you’re clearly telling the person it’s happening there. though, I, I love that aspect though, of expanding it to, you know, personal success, that there’s a challenge. No, I, I’d say this, having seen so many clients over the years, here’s the one that’s coming in for two people for weight loss, let’s say, and I can comfortably put most of them into two baskets as they were.

There’s this group that clearly gets the result they’re going after, and then there’s this other group that is doing a lot better yet, clearly they didn’t hit that goal yet. Still, okay. They’re 30 pounds down rather than 60, and they’re thrilled with it. So still high five. You’re doing great though. It’s, it’s often they’re still holding onto that preconceived notion that it has to be hard.

So there’s something about that leaf structure getting in there. And then that becomes a self prophecy. It becomes hard. Right? Um, I, I, I, I, I got this one. I think this penny drunk dropped on this one for me when I did, uh, a lot of smoking sessions. That’s my, um, one of my first, uh, uh, four days. One of my first sessions I focused on was stop smoking sessions.

And initially I was terrified of them because, you know, you can’t find results. There are a smoking, although not smoking, right? There’s, there’s, there’s a very black and white test. So it terrified me, which one of the reasons I, uh, I started going for them. And, um, one of the games I started playing with my clients was the, uh, the indirect suggestion game.

Just like you’re saying here, where I, I had a two session protocol and, um, I t come in, in the first session, would do most of the work, and I tell them that, you know, we’re not done yet. We’ll be finishing up in the next session, but, uh, I have to warn you, and I love the phrasing. I have to warn you that, uh, a lot of people when they go home between sessions, they decide that, uh, they just don’t wanna smoke anymore.

And, and, you know, feel free to carry on smoking if you want to. No pressure anyway. But if you feel like you really don’t wanna do it, you look at your cigarette and you just think, what’s the point of this? And of course there’s a lot of setup that, that before this already, then don’t force yourself to smoke.

It’s okay. You not gonna break the program if you, if you stop early. Right? And I, I found that about, I dunno, seven out of 10 people will then spontaneously quit between sessions. And the reason I like that is because there’s no fighting, wrestling and minding like that. They just got surprised by it. And of course the others had to do with a little bit more work to, um, get over the hump of the second session.

Um, and, and, uh, but that’s the, you know, that’s the idea of the self fulfilling prophecy. They, they get intrigued by an idea. And then the idea comes to life for them. Um, but of course the, the flip side is also true. There’s a lot of people out there and, and you see them on, you know, America’s Got Talent or these different talent shows who have no concept of just how unskilled they really are, right?

They, they, they, the illusion they hold inside their mind is very different from their reality. And then you see them, uh, failing and, and not understanding why they failed, which is the sad part. Uh, and then you can see the yama like to build up again where the illusion gets, uh, reinforced. I am good, just no one else gets me, type thing.

Um, and, and, and, and I think that’s, that’s sad because I’m sure these people could be good if they trained, if they learned, if they progressed and. But they’re not willing to put the effort to systematically grow in this case, as musicians say. Um, because they are bound by the illusion that they already are better than they are.

You see, when, when the learning cycle gets, uh, when your belief interferes with the learning cycle, that’s when you have a problem. When your belief reinforces the learning cycle, then I think you have a great solution. Uh, and I think that’s for me is the, the magic, the difference between pretending, um, in a successful way and pretending in a delusional way.

Does that make sense? That does, and there’s gotta be some trace of that magical quality, I think, for us to actually find the interest in this. In most cases, though, Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You can’t just impose on someone, a lifestyle or reality that, that does that doesn’t speak to them. I mean, let’s go back to my own interest and hypnosis.

You know, as a kid watching the Styles movies, there’s the whole generation of, uh, kids who were blown away by that. And, and you know, some have gone down the literal path of joining the Church of Jedi. There’s actually, it’s a thing, apparently. Yes. And they have fun with this. And then I, and you know what?

God bless them. Um, or the force bless them in this case, I guess, Right? There you go. . Others have gone a more metaphorical route and they’ve become, You know, maybe magicians, maybe there’s a whole slew of magicians that were, um, um, inspired by, you know, the Star War saga. And one of my favorites is Darren Brown actually, you know, does similar, you know, stunt that are right on the verge that it could fit into a Star Wars type universe.

Uh, and the reason I find that more interesting is because when we have a physical limitation, in other words, um, you can’t, you know, gather up these magical energies and suddenly make something, uh, happen right in front of you, you know, outta a sheer force of will. That’s the, the, the, the world is not set up to work that way.

Um, but you can create an analog, a metaphorical version of that, that gives you the same, uh, quality of experience, but it’s actually possible in the, within the physical limits of our. Does that, that make sense? That does, I still have default In the one side note, and I think you’ll get this specific, uh, connotation of what I’m saying here, that still within such a presentation, we can play with language in such a way that the memory of what actually happens is closer to the magic than the event actually was.

Yes. Yes. And, and let’s face it, um, when, when you go to a movie and you feel that magic, right? What are you feeling the magic for? All you’re seeing is a pattern of flickering lights on a screen and you’re getting, you know, some sounds coming at you. I mean, if you, let’s just break it down to its simplistic thing.

It’s light energy and sound energy and that’s it, right? We, our brains are putting these things together in a way that gives us this meaning, this, this emotional high, if you like. And, and it’s drawing the meaning out of it, which means, um, you can put the meaning back into things. And this is, I think, a very interesting concept that, that, um, our culture has lost sight of.

That you can put meaning into things. Now, back in the days when, when, uh, religion was the more dominant force, and, and I ed religion’s spiritu, by the way, um, that people would imbu things by giving it a God like nature. You know, God made that tree. God made that lawn, God made that river. Let’s respect these things, right?

And I think has a great deal of value. I’m not saying that everyone, uh, thought in these terms, but those people that did it was very easy to put meaning and value into the world. Um, it becomes a lot harder in a secular society, especially when our values, uh, at least the media values are being pushed, seem to be things like stay young forever when you grow old.

Then panic because life is, is, is no good anymore, right? Um, it’s a strong media meme going on right now. Um, you know, value, uh, cash and material possessions. It’s a huge media meme. Just look at advertising, right? And, and, uh, you know, the weird one now is, um, the more unhealthy you are, the more guilt ridden, the more shameful you seem to feel, the more, um, the more virtuous you are in a weird way.

And that one I don’t get at all. Right? Uh, and these are, these are very unhealthy means that our cultures is, that’s being reinforced to the median. Our culture, and the reason I say they’re unhealthy is because they take us away from finding. , what’s meaningful for us in our lives. Other people are trying to tell you what should be valuable and meaningful to you.

They’re not offering you a buffet of, of values and saying, Here’s the consequences of valuing these things over these things. Now it’s up to you, right? If you value money over ethics, well, uh, chances are you letting up in jail, or at least you’ll end up the kind of person that should be in jail. Does that make sense?

Mm-hmm. And these thoughts are, are, are, um, I think pretty straightforward, but a lot of people don’t take time to think them through. And so then you’re left with, you know, just watch reality TV shows. I think the, uh, I saw a snippet of, I’m not sure was the Kardashians or, or some housewives or whatever show.

Um, but it’s all drama. And I’m only drama in the sense of, you know, uh, the Greek tragedies that are designed to help you exercise your emotions. No, this is just purely people behaving badly and creating hurt and misery for each other. That’s awful. It’s, it’s, I don’t think it’s a very nice way to live life.

And by being distracted by, uh, messages like that, we don’t get encouraged to think for ourselves, What do I need? What do I. Where do I draw meaning and how can I make the world around me feel more meaningful by living up to whatever internal standards I wanna set for myself? Does that make sense? That does, and it brings to mind that fact that from one person to another, we’re attaching a different set of meaning to practically anything else out there.

I mean, it’s all, you know, study of subjective reality and it, it’s often the importance that, as I say in the hypnosis world, that no matter how clever you think, uh, the two of us might be, or even you may be as a practitioner, whatever’s often going on inside of the client is gonna be so much more profound once they uncover that, once they discover that.

So to leave place in your work for the client to, you know, allow the change to occur. It’s where I’ve heard you speak at times around allowing the silence to really land inside of the session. 100%. And I think the power pausing. It’s a hugely overlooked thing in hypnosis, and I know why. When I started, I, I fortunately didn’t have as good as instructors as you did, so I, I, my first few instructors were more insecure about, You can tell there was, they have not, A skill wasn’t solid.

As an example, the very first guy I actually paid to go to a life training with. It was horrible. I, I left with knowing less of a hypnosis and having more insecurities about doing hypnosis than before I arrived. So when I was self taught from books, I had more confidence and better skill and better results.

Then after I left the seminars, I don’t know what kind of. Antin went on there, but it wasn’t good . Um, and, and, and I think taking time and, and of course with that mindset in the back of your mind, the idea of it’s gotta work, it’s gotta work, it’s gotta work. Um, I at least got very desperate. I’ve gotta keep talking, I’ve gotta keep making suggestions.

Uh, I’ve gotta find that magical phrase that will get everything done right? Uh, and of course that always escapes you when you are overthinking, things like that. And over time, what I realize what happens is if you give a really good suggestion, why would you ruin it by giving another one right afterwards?

Think of like having a meal, right? If I’ve just taken the trouble to create this wonderful gourmet mission, star level meal, right? Why would I tell you you’ve only got five minutes to gobble it up before I give you dessert? I mean, that doesn’t make sense. You wanna sit there, you wanna appreciate the color and the smells, and then bouncing the different flavors of the foods as you put ’em together and create this, uh, this, uh, art in your mouth, this flavorful experience.

You want people to take time to be able to enjoy it. And I think suggestions work the same way. The more you can give people time to enjoy the impact of the suggestion, the more you give space for their unconscious to run with it. And that’s when the really cool stuff happens. Um, I found that the, now that the more I shut up, the more I can catch offers from the unconscious, which are even cooler now, because once the unconscious mind’s already offered it, then you know, you’re pretty much onto a winner.

You know it’s going to succeed. But the, the, the irony is the conscious mind, even though they’ve just literally said it out loud, they have no idea. They said it out loud. And when you ask ’em about it, go, What are you talking about? It’s a really interesting kind of phenomenon. Um, but I really like it. I think that’s when we’re really onto something and it takes a lot of pressure of us as hypnotists because, um, we are not so much, um, you know, magicians, uh, exuding a force on the world.

We are more inventors tinkering with a mechanism until it’s working better. And the mechanism, of course, is not in my mind. If you’re the client, it’s in your mind. And so I think that’s, that, that, that’s much more relieving. It’s more question of, let’s try this, see what happens. All right, what happened?

All right, let’s try it this way. Now tell me what happened. And then getting that feedback loop going means you’re no longer guessing as to what’s going on. You’re actually you knowing. And then you know, is it time to do something else? Is it time to change direction? Is it time to step things up? Or is it time to just shut up and let them do it?

They’re doing it right. Um, I don’t need the glory anymore. They can take all the glory for themselves as long as they get the change they’re looking for. Right? So this side note here is that often as we’re having this conversation, I’m looking for, uh, what is gonna be that, uh, sort of clickworthy title, uh, of the presentation.

I think we landed on, uh, Egore shuts up about hypnosis, , although, uh, no, we’re not gonna use that. Um, it def definitely beats the other session. Previous title, which could have been, uh, Larry Elman has multiple issues and instead turned into, uh, working on multiple issues with Larry Elman. I I, is there a specific strategy?

Is there a specific technique though, Um, in terms of finding that moment to let that silence land? So, so I think that the secret answer to this is observation, right? Mm-hmm. , and I’m gonna give you this. You’re a magician, so I know you’ll appreciate this. I, I, I’ll give you this from, uh, something I did way back in the early days.

Uh, I did some mentalism, which is a, for you listing a home. It’s the brand of magic. That fake psychic phenomena. And of course you can tell with my level style was what I was trying to fake. Right? Um, and it’s complete fake. Just, just so we know, this is very clear. I, I have no pretensions to medical abilities.

It, it was a nice showpiece, uh, you know, fakeness. And in this particular, um, this particular trick, um, was semi hypnotic in the sense that you’re inducing someone to think of a particular shape and then you draw the shape. And, um, magic miracle you can read people’s minds, right? Um, so this, this is the reason I like this trick is because it was a little bit of hypnosis involved in terms of, you are suggesting some simple shapes or circle or triangle or a square or something like that.

And, uh, you know, it hits maybe seven times out of 10 and sometimes it misses, right? And then you just have a little bit of egg in your face and you move on. Now, on this particular day, I was, um, I was trying to suggest a triangle, right? And, uh, I might as well give the method away. It’s real simple. As you’re speaking, you make a casual hand gesture.

And one of the hand gestures turns into a, a triangle as you tell ’em to think about a shape, you just flash the image of a triangle to them with, you know, your fingers making a quick triangle. It’s something that the conscious mind tends to not pick up. The mind tends to pick up wherever everything’s cool, right?

And then, and then of course they went, Okay, I’ve got it. You got it. Great. So then I go through the whole rigmarole pretending to read its mind and saying, It’s kind of like this. I see this, I see a line and all the rest of it. And then I came up with my magical phrase. It’s a triangle. Now, the important action now is describing the features of the person I was talking to.

Um, his, his eyes were round, wide, open, eyebrow sky high in his face, draw, dropping as just doing the. You know, lines and talking about the angles and all the rest of it. And, and he was totally excited until I said the word triangle. And then everything in his facial expression fell. His eyebrows dropped.

His, uh, eyelid drew. Yeah, I think he tripled, blinked in disappointment. His jaw snapshot. I mean, this is, this is, this was obvious, right? There was no subtlety required to read this man’s reaction. And what does this mean? It means he wasn’t thinking of a triangle. He’s disappointed. I got it wrong cuz he was so excited.

What’s happening? Right? And, and this is, this is the bit where I, I felt glorious in redemption cuz I went No, no, sorry. Someone else was thinking of a triangle. So you shut up, stop thinking . And everyone got really surprised by that because the guy next thing will think of the triangle, which of course is an extra miracle, right?

But that was a, a, a, a lucky coincidence. Well kind of. Um, this guy was actually thinking of a, of a, of a rectangle, of a square, um, you know, like a, a football net type thing because that’s what he resonated with, right? And because I’d been describing lines and angles and he is excited by that. There’s only three shapes.

There’s a circle, there’s a triangle, there’s a square. Those are the only really simple shapes people think about. And, uh, he was thinking, he responded to the idea of having angles in it, which is circle doesn’t have. And if it’s not a triangle, it’s gotta be the square. So I told him was a square miracle Save face really lit up again.

Draw dropped again, eyebrow. Uh, you know, pumps, uh, uh, fists in the air, whoops. In the air thinking, this is amazing thing, but really what happened? What was happening? I took a educated guess as to what was in his mind. I got it wrong. I read his unconscious reaction and before his conscious mind could step in and realized, I am disappointed.

I corrected my direction into the correct answer, if you like, in this case, and this is the important. Once that happened, the rest happens inside his mind. This point is where ego shuts up, right? Mm-hmm. , it’s just a square, and then it goes, and then I shut up and now everything is helping his mind. I can’t believe.

How do you do this? Oh, I just, you know, said a few things and then, you know, Oh, I thought you, I was really worried. Cause I thought you were gonna get wrong for a second. I said, Yeah, I’m sorry. Your friend was thinking too loudly. Reemphasizing, Of course, the, uh, the, that part of the trick, if you like, right?

And, and, and, um, you know, it is a really nice, it would end up being a really nice moment, but the, the secret here is it’s reading people’s reactions. Now, why am I mentioning all of this in the context of when you shut up in hypnosis? Well, it’s simple. When I present a suggestion to someone and they have what looks like a really positive reaction, um, then, then that’s the point at which I shut up and let them have their moment.

Right. Um, give you example of examples of this. Um, how do you get good at, first of all, how do you spot these signals? The signals they’re looking for are real simple agreement versus disagreement, right? Mm-hmm. , so speak to people and, and, and throw lots of yes. Sets out and throw lots of no sets out. And after a while you’ll start noticing that there is a differe.

In how they answer no style questions to yes style questions. And that difference can be generalized overall. There’s the, the accepting quality of a yes. Up question tends to be open posture, open eyes, and head nodding, all these little things that are there, right? Uh, you all, we all get a positive vibe from people.

Uh, with, with, with no, you tend to get more of a shutdown vibe, a less pleasant vibe, a a, a disconnecting kind of thing. And again, the body language will show it in terms of head, shake, smile, frown, uh, increased blinking or shielding by closing the eyes or turning away. These little signs will tell you.

They didn’t like something makes, if that makes sense. Um, mm-hmm. , So they didn’t like it. My, my follow my, my, my, uh, my simple option at that point is to ask what just happened. Cause chances are my suggestion stimulated a preexisting suggestion. Like, for example, I’ve told them, You great person, and I get that little frn response, shall we say?

I’ll just pause and say, So what just happened? And he’ll tell me about how, uh, memory, flashback of being four years old and being told by mommy or daddy or a teacher, you’re no good person. You’ll never mount to anything, right? So there’s a preexisting negative suggestion that I now have to deal with. Um, on the flip side.

Um, if, if he just sort of sits there like he is a, a, um, uh, a seal bathing in the sun, right? Just absorbing all the luxuries of the, all the suggestions, then that’s the point at which I shut up and let them have their moment. Um, there are other times I’ll do this too. So there is an example of teaching and ericsonian hypnosis course, a metaphor course.

And, um, I was telling a, a kind of a cooking style metaphor, uh, to help the, the personal stage overcome, um, uh, some s about deserving this and so on. And, uh, you know, in the story, when it got to the dramatic point in the story, uh, I could tell that the client was getting really emotional. Something in the story had triggered, uh, her emotions and, uh, she started crying and in, in a, um, therapeutic sense.

In other words, you could tell she was releasing a lot of pent up emotions. Let’s put that way, right. So what did I do with my story? I shut up mid-sentence even, right? Because she did a time to process that emotion. So why would I, would I rush over it? I just shut up, maybe five minutes or so as that emotion intensified, intensified, peaked, and slowly drained away, and it hadn’t gone entirely.

It had, uh, mostly drained out, carried on the first story basically where it left off. Uh, and without making any comment about that emotional reaction, why? Because, well, there’s no need. The whole point of indirect method here is to let them process it in their own way. And clearly they’re doing it. But the key is, if I kept talking, when the emotions came up like that, then she wouldn’t have heard the rest of that story.

She would’ve been so busy trying to handle the emotions. She wouldn’t have heard the story, or she would’ve tried to suppress the emotions in order to hear the story. Either way, the impact of the moment would’ve been. Do you see what I mean? Yeah. So it really just comes down to that calibration with that individual to observe that something is landing, something is happening.

Yeah. And to really let that be the cue, to shut the hell up, and to just let, let that rest, let that take place. And if in doubt, just ask. Right. So what’s happening? It’s a really, I mean, this blew my mind, John Tuff, uh, who considered to be my mentor. Taught me this idea up until this point. Um, you know, my style of hypnosis was basically the house of cards.

Build them really subtly and quietly, and then when they’re done, open their eyes, kick them out before a stiff breeze comes along to blow the house of cars back down again. I, I didn’t want to fail in my office if it was gonna fail. Let them fail out of sight. I dunno if you feel bad about myself. Right?

And that was essentially my, my attitude. Bad attitude. By the way, folks, I don’t recommend this. No, I, I’d agree. I, I keep seeing the pattern that I refer to as the look don’t see that, uh, they can clearly tell the client is not in motion, something is not working. And continuing on with the theme of, well, this is how we always do it and it ought to work.

As opposed to be vulnerable in that moment. Realize that, okay, I do have a part of this. Yes. And, and the thing, the key distinction to me, Um, to, to, to come up with the concept was just mind blowing for me. Uh, when, when John over just said, I’d rather have the client fail in front of me when I have a chance to do something about it, to fix it than to fail at home and then beat themselves up about something.

Uh, and, and I thought just of course, as genius, I’d rather run my sessions longer and get the job done and don’t feel good that I’ve actually helped someone. Then they try and fake it and take the money and run. Right? Um, and then the Corolla of that is how do you know something’s working? The idea that you have to wait an hour to finish talking and then bring them back and say, So how was that?

It’s crazy. You can just talk to them in France. So, how are you doing now? What’s happening now? Your eyes and talk to me. Right? Free speech returns to your throat and sometimes people need encouragement here to speak like that, right? But the point is, you can actually talk to someone when they’re in. And the question is, are they in trans or not?

The answer is, again, very simple. It doesn’t matter if it’s their conscious or their unconscious mind talking to you. Either way, you’ll get the information to know what your next step is, right? So you don’t have to make a distinction about conscious, unconscious minds, uh, talking to you at that point. Um, you just need to know where their experience is.

Is there a suggestion landing as intended, or is it, uh, is it being fought by some preexisting idea? And either way, you’ve got something to do. If it’s a preexisting idea that’s fighting you, then you find that idea, and then your next round of suggestions are about neutralizing and dissolving that suggestion.

And that might be a longer process. It might take two or three sessions with a really entrenched idea to loosen it like that. Otherwise, if it’s something that’s actually resonating with them, then take whatever I, uh, ideas are resonating with. So preexisting suggestions that are reinforcing that. Find out about them and use them to reinforce the suggestion further, and you go, That’s right.

It’s exactly like when you were five years old playing in the snow. I have no idea why it’s like being five years old and playing in the snow, but clearly it’s something positive for them. They’ve accepted it. So I’m gonna reinforce it that way. Make sense? It, it does. So being in the moment and getting that feedback.

Know, I love that concept of, you know, getting that feedback rather than waiting to see Yeah. That, um, yeah, I, I think this is a helpful frame. Even if you’re in process with a client. Let’s say you’re a couple of sessions in, you’re working on something over a. Brief series of sessions and I, I found it to be absolutely critical to have that moment to actually say, with a smile on the face, I’m glad that we had this challenge while we’re still working together.

Mm. Uh, because this means we get to actually do something about it rather than having it explode later on. So, great. You’re here. What does that feel like? Let’s go after this. Yeah. And you know what? You nailed it there. There’s nothing wrong with extra things coming to your session. Clients are very reasonable people, generally speaking, and you say, Listen, there’s something you just came up.

Uh, I think this is probably part of what we need to do. It’ll probably extend our program by a few sessions. Are you okay with that? Do you wanna pursue this? Right? Um, but most clients do, especially if you’ve got a good rapport with them and they see that you’re in this for them and that they’re already signed to get some successes and so on.

Um, I, I, you know, I don’t, I don’t like inflating sessions just for the sake of it. You know, I, I, I’ve seen some people who will inflate sessions and, you know, make them longer and so on, just to get more cash. And I don’t like that approach. Mm-hmm. , I think it’s a very useful approach. That doesn’t mean they don’t like long sessions.

I do. Uh, as I’ve, as I have my children, the skills I’ve gone out of this kick I used to have of fixing everything in 20 minutes or less. Right. Um, yeah. You know, one session, uh, miracles and they’re great and they still happen, but they, and they’re still great, but I think they’re much healthier option now is to give them medium to long term programs.

Because if they can do one thing in one session, have a mind blowing change, that’s good. They’ve gone home. It’s over that one little problem, that remedial problem’s been squashed. Fantastic. But the thing that really excites me when someone goes from, you know, is the zero to hear story. Their life is currently constrained in all these different ways.

And you give ’em one little miracle, another little miracle. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Each one is of course its own little session, but over a while, after a while they become generalized. They, they’re the avalanche. You know, you’ve thrown enough pebbles down that an avalanche is now going to ensue. And I love seeing people’s lives post avalanche, right?

When everything is turned around and then they say, You know, my life is so totally different now in a good way. I, I could never have conceived of myself being where I am right now before we started this process. And, and, uh, given how much we can do in one or two sessions, then the question I ask myself, Well, if they can get this much done in one session, what amazing people, how amazing could their lives be if we spend three months, or six months or a year working together?

Now, that I think is when it gets really exciting because now you go from remedial to generative change, uh, from, you know, overcoming this problem, this problem, this problem to, um, having such an amazing life that all the problems you used to have literally are no longer possible, right? Yeah. Here’s an analogy.

What I mean by that, um, you know, um, most kids have some kind of a security blanket, whether it’s a stuffed toy or an actual blanket, or a favorite shirt or something they carry around. They carry it around because it’s, it’s, it gives ’em a sense of security. They’re attached to it emotionally, right? Uh, and it’s a phase that most kids will hopefully grow out of.

You know, I, I haven’t seen a man with a security blanket recently, but I’m sure, uh, they, they exist out there somewhere, . Um, but here’s the thing. I dunno if you have one of these things or not. When you were young, But let’s assume you did. Uh, I I certainly did. And, and at the time, you know, the idea of losing it or not having it when I needed it was terrifying, right?

You go on a trip, it has to come with me, right? Uh, were you gonna stay overnight? Cause somebody’s gotta come with me? And, and there is a kind of an obsessive ideation, an obsessive thought. That is afraid of what would the world be like if it’s not there right now? Clearly that fear is no longer with me.

And, and, and in case it wasn’t clear, I’ll make it clear. Now. I do not have that fear anymore. I do not have a security blanket. In fact, I have no idea where my old security blanket or a toy has disappeared to. It’s dis it’s disappeared in the, in the animals of time. And I’m okay with that. Uh, why? Uh, because now I have my, I have, as I’ve matured as a person, the class of problems I used to have as a child are no longer possible for me right now.

I have other problems. It’s true. And there are other things that challenge me. That’s absolutely correct. But all the things that used to challenge me as a child no longer challenged me in that way, uh, because I have grown. And that’s the concept I have in my mind for generative. What if a person becomes so amazing that all the problems they’re currently facing are no longer possible, They’ll still, of course, there’ll be other problems that they’ll have to face, but those are called, uh, high quality problems.

Right, Right. Let’s just through this, down, let’s take the hypnosis, uh, um, uh, success principle. Um, most IORs are struggling to make ends meet, and, and, you know, the, their, their problem is cash, like getting, drawing cash in by getting clients in, Right? That’s the fundamental problem. A lot of, uh, especially starting with therapist south, let’s say a low quality problem.

The high quality problem version of this is you have so many clients and so much cash. You don’t know what to do with the cash. It’s just sitting in the bank and you feel it needs to do something, but you don’t know. Should you buy a house with it? Should you invest in the stock market with it? Should you invest in another corporation privately?

What should you do with that money? Now that can weigh on your mind, of course, but so it’s a problem, but it’s the kind of problem that you wouldn’t have had when you were trying to, just struggling to pay the bills because you don’t have enough coming in to meet your life demands at this point. They’re fundamentally different types of problems, and I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have high level problems, the low level problems, right?

It, it, it suggests that my life is going pretty well. If the thing I’m worried about is where do I invest my money as opposed to, uh, where the heck do I get enough money to eat next week and pay my rent? Does that make. Yeah, it does. It’s where, you know, the, the theory and maybe out of you, just out of Buddhist philosophy, the idea that our problems will go away is not the case.

That instead our problems get more interesting. There’s a quick story of a guy who I worked with that he did call me up about a year after we worked on his fear of public speaking. Mm-hmm. , and the first thing he said was, I’ve got a brand new problem, . And I could tell he was smiling as he said it, because now he’s been speaking, he’s been promoted several times over.

And as he put it, he goes, You know, I’ve been so successful at this yet now because of my higher position, I’m having to manage a team of people that he goes, I don’t even have to say this to my teenage sons. I have to look at these adults that work and say, Look, you don’t have to like each other, you just have to get the work done,

And it’s him, you know, from the point of view of, I’m so much happier, I’ve got this as an issue. He goes, It doesn’t bother me so much at work. He goes, It’s kind of going home with me and it’s keeping me up at night. I, I’d rather have this problem than, than that old problem. That, So, So the question to you though, is this something that, and this, I don’t mean to put it as this, uh, polarized issue, black and white, that you’ve just described Exactly why.

I’m a firm believer in a multiple session protocol and in my world, I kick off with a series of three appointments and the phrasing. If that’s all we need, fantastic. If there’s value and more, of course that’s an option. And I see a nice mix of people that were three and done, we’re four or five and done, and here’s someone coming this week that it’s, I’d say, off the top of my head, the 17th or 18th time yet.

We’re continuing that story. We’re continuing that journey. I’m not just compounding what we did in the first session. I, Is this type of generative change possible in the shape of a one session meeting? Oh, I, I think so. Absolutely. Yeah. But it’s gonna be, it’s gotta be something pretty profound. In other words, something that turns the world so upside down.

Um, you know, it’s, it’s a slow burning fuse. It’s an idea that’s so ins. That, um, everything they do from that point on will be different. Right. So, so, you know, what is that idea? Well, I wish there was a universal idea that, that, uh, you know, would work for everyone, but I don’t think that is such a thing, but I’ll give you something close to it.

And, and, and I’ve seen this, I actually work, um, uh, literally work miracles in people’s lives, right? Um, and this is, this is a bit of an unfashionable thing nowadays, but, uh, screwed. I don’t care because, uh, what I care about what works, and this is the idea of the people who’ve gone from being, um, non-spiritual, being spiritual from being essentially atheist or agnostic to being.

Uh, kind of bringing God into their lives in some way. Right. And, um, the reason I said this is, uh, I’ve got a couple of people in mind who, who, uh, were sexually abused as children, essentially raped as children in apologies for turning a little bit dark here. It’s a messed up thing. And especially with someone that’s happened to not just once, but over a period of time, uh, one particular person think about her father, not only, uh, raped himself but handed her out to his friends as like, uh, party favors, horrible things to do.

Right. And you can imagine that can crush someone and their, their, their life trajectory is going to go to very dark places. And in fact, uh, has was going to dark places for her and, and some of the other people I’m thinking about right now. Right. And then, and here’s what I’m mentioned. The idea, the idea of God, not whether or not you think God exists is, is just a unrelated.

Uh, what matters is that they believe in God and his existence, and most importantly in what God means, right? God, not meaning, you know, the God of wrath and punishment, and hellfire and brimstone. No. The version of God that they needed was the one of pure love, of kindness, of acceptance, of, you know, sacrifice for you, of compassion, taking those high level concepts and compressing it all into one idea and this idea, we’ll call God for now.

Whether again, you think of God as natural entity that exists. Or an idea that people, uh, live up to, That’s entirely your choice. I’m not, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter for this, uh, argument here, right? Um, but here’s what I saw. Starting, seeing happening. It wasn’t an overnight change. No. But as they started conceptualizing this, all loving or all compassionate, uh, all powerful being that’s rooting them for them on the sidelines.

You know, like a parent rooting for their, their child in a football match and, and you know, they’ve been benched for too long. Now they’ve got their. The parent really wants to succeed and having that mindset or someone really wanting to succeed, and this person happens to be the man, uh, or the dude, or the woman, if you wanna go for goddesses instead, the point is you have this super supportive frame, and every time they feel guilt or shame, or, uh, every time they, they are faced with a moral quandary, How should I act?

Well, I want to do this, but is that the right thing? Having this, uh, loving, kind, wholesome reference point to use as their decision making, uh, strategy, if you like. Um, I’ve seen them turn their lives around, you know, um, the, the, the particular, uh, um, uh, again, later was telling you about, um, her. They’re going down to distractor path with drugs.

One person’s, one of her friends is probably gonna dive a drug over there soon. He’s already had a few close calls. The other one is hanging out with, uh, uh, gangsters had a, a gun pulled on them a few times. So, you know, you can see that that’s going down a very dark path. But this girl here, she has completely transformed herself.

She, um, has chosen a different path. She’s hanging out less and less with those self structured friends. Uh, she’s seeing more and more of that self destruction in their behavior, which is polarizing her more and more as her own faith grows. Now again, I’m not suggesting faith is, is the only path to helping people through things like that, but what I am suggesting is that that one meeting with someone and then whoever it was, it doesn’t really.

That gave them a sense of there is this divine entity that’s out for your best interest. And that idea resonated with them so much that from that point on their life started getting better and better and better. It doesn’t mean that they, they were, um, they didn’t screw up ever again after that. No, lots of screw ups along the ways, but each screw up became slightly healthier, slightly more benign, slightly less damaging and destructive.

And over time, the, the, the individual became more peaceful. They became happier, they became more pro social, proactive. Um, and, and I’m sure that journey’s gonna continue on, but I think that’s the power of an idea that really, uh, drives someone towards health. And if you can find that idea with someone, um, whether it’s it lies within their spirituality or it lies in some other aspect of their, um, their personality, their drives and so on.

That I think is where the generative change comes from. The problem of course, of doing that in one session is, um, as far as I know, I can’t think of a method. That will find that one magical idea for someone in an hour or less. Right? Yeah. I wish I knew that would be instant therapy done for life. Right.

Um, I also flashback to your story of trying to, uh, draw out the shape of a triangle and the guy thought of a rectangle and yet the person next to them was thinking of a triangle and turn into a bit of a hit. Yeah. That i’d, uh, I, I’d folded in the catch phrase that this kind of came out of my stage hypnosis years of residual trance.

Yes. Uh, which the, the catch phrase that I’d use for this, where here’s the one where very clearly I’m saying the person I’m tapping on the shoulder. Mm-hmm. in a moment you’re gonna see everybody else get up. The moment they get up, you’re gonna find you’re stuck to the chair. And hilarity wanted the sue and it was very clear that I was giving that to just one person, and yet I do my dismissal.

and down the row, here’s this one person who was also stuck to the chair. Yet clearly that wasn’t for them. I, I’d bring that up here because, uh, well, there’s the extreme story of here’s this, uh, person that I worked with that she calls me up in a bit of a, a panic going, Hey, I, I, I got on the plane. I’ve traveled here to this convention.

No problem, but I need you to call me back right away. I need to, I need you to answer me a question. And already I’m thinking, Oh, dear. And as soon as I’m on the phone with her, she’s going, I need you to explain something. Why is my public speaking fear also gone ? And all I could think was you, the, the, the pause followed by You’re welcome , that maybe, you know, at its core, you know, it may have been something related.

Perhaps we can just simply go off of that simple idea, yet as soon as this thing’s in motion and dominoes. Another thing, another thing, another thing that just simply getting that foot in the door sometimes is what dominoes So many other things that. You could be creating changes on things you didn’t even know and even they didn’t even know they needed to address.

That means where the generative change comes in, remedial change tends to be contained. Um, you know, it, you get this one thing done and that’s it. Generative change is a rule, has a way of spreading throughout your life in a benign way. Right. Um, your story just reminds me of another one of a, um, later work with for a snake phobia.

And this is a really strong fo is the point where just saying the word. Cause a woman just sat, sit down and almost faint. It was that intense. Right? So, you know, uh, as opposed to going straight into a, a kind of a, a, you know, whatever phobia cure model, at this point I use the regression, but the methods irrelevant.

Before I could go into the actual phobia cure itself, I had to spend 50 minutes. Just kind of, uh, hypnotically calming her down enough to be able to do the session. Otherwise, um, you can imagine what someone on the verge of panic would, would do when they go into trans from the verge of panic. Not the best place to, uh, kinda get started from.

Right. Anyway, the, the session itself was very intense, lots of emotions, uh, huge capacity, big release, and that’s nice. Now, the bit that was really interesting, of course, was what happened to her afterwards. Uh, she sent me a few emails and a, and a, and a photograph afterwards. The photograph was charming.

It’s her standing in a pet shop with a snake called around her neck and a look of disbelief in her face pen. I can’t believe I’m doing this right. Um, but the, the, the other side of it though is, and the idea that really stuck with her was, if you can do this, what else can you do? Right? And this lady was a mother, so she was, she was facing a snake phobia part to show her kids.

That you can do anything you set your mind to. But then she took that message literally for herself as well. Right? Once, although she, the initial fuel to get her to this is, you know, I’ve gotta do this so I can show my children that you don’t get, you don’t have to get stuck in life. We don’t have to get stuck with the fear.

Right. But, uh, because, and why, because that’s gonna open up their life to potentials and so on. And that’s actually exactly how I should end up treating it for herself. So that seed idea, that core idea that can be generative, can come from anywhere. Um, the problem is I don’t, you know, I don’t exactly know exactly how to shape it each time.

Where an individual that tends to come out of interactions, conversations, and often just as side remarks someone makes, has the, to my ear, the tingling of something unconscious. So when I reflected back them in some other ways, a suggest. They just take it on board and like they’re a man dying of first with now a gallon of water.

They’re just chugging awaited because they really like this idea. And that idea can be, if it’s wholesome enough, can totally change your life around. Um, do you mind if I share a quick Eric’s story around this? I love that. So this is the, um, I forgot his name now. Also. It’s Bob or Bill, I think it’s Bill, uh, Bill’s back in town story.

And I’m not gonna do, I’m gonna do the same just as Ericson does. Uh, but feel free to look this one up. Um, Ericsson’s a little 10 year old boy or something like that, playing with his friends and his friend comes up and says, Have you heard bill’s back in town? And who’s Bill? Bill’s the local troublemaker, right?

Uh, as soon as, uh, uh, you know, Bill’s spent, uh, from the age of 16, he’s been and out of prison for the last 10 years. And, um, he’s a willful man. So, for example, you know, he spent most of his time in prison in solitary confinement, which is, uh, pure hell if, if, you know, anyone’s been in those things. Um, because the, the wardens couldn’t break him.

So he is there stubborn, opposite man, angry at life. And whenever he shows up, things go missing. You know, within a week of bill turning up, uh, trailer goes missing, a boat goes missing, and a bunch of tools go missing and the hardware store is missing. Well, a lot of hardware, right? Uh, everyone knows who did it, but no one can actually, uh, point the finger play.

No one has any improve. So Bill is still going around until his next, where actually gets caught to go to prison. Right? But now this is a little different because, um, um, uh, Erics. Uh, you know, spots Bill talking to, uh, I don’t know the lady’s name, but it’s the, uh, the, the local, uh, darling, she’s the, a wealthy farmer’s daughter.

She’s, uh, getting older. She hasn’t married yet and everyone’s getting a little bit worried. You know this back in the days where people are getting married at 18 or 16 or something and she’s now her twenties and not married to, people are getting very worried that she’ll become an all spinster, but she’s also, she’s beautiful.

She’s the, hes to this very wealthy farm. So she’s basically, uh, a dream catch, right? Bill’s talking to this young lady and he says to her, Can I take you to the dance on Friday night? And she looks up at the middle coil and says, You can, if you’re a gentleman now, that is the phrase you can, as long as you’re a gentleman.

What’s implied by a gentleman? Well, let’s find out. Within a week with, before Friday comes around, the trailer’s gone missing, goes un missing the boat suddenly turns up on the dock again, and there’s a big box full of hardware outside the local hardware store. Being returned. Right? Um, from that point forward, of course, uh, Bill.

And, and then, then the, the, the lady went for their dance. They started courting, they got married. Bill’s life turned around. He became a, um, a work hand at the father’s farm, or one of the most reliable, trusted workman the father ever had. He sang his praises in time. The two married, he inherited for farm.

And he’s the really interesting part of the anecdote, when Ericson grew up and was ready to go to college himself, um, most of the farmers around him tried to dissuade him. They, they thought that college would ruin him. He’s a perfect good farmer. And this, these city folk, well, they didn’t really know what life is about and they’re gonna ruin him.

And they tried to dissuade him from, you know, losing it, another farmer to the big city draw, right? Bill on the other hand, sat him down and said, Listen, young man, um, you should go. And the reason you should go is because you need to, um, you need to expand your mind to expand your option and have a better life.

If you wanna come back, you can always come back. But you don’t know if you can, You know, you don’t know if you’re coming back for the right reasons, unless you’ve seen more of the world or learned more of the world. And I’m paraphrasing, probably much more complex conversation. But here’s the big thing for me, the art criminal of the piece became the hero.

In fact, he became the mentor to the hero. Erickson, I don’t think would’ve become Erickson. He couldn’t have become the Erickson. We know if he had stayed as a really interesting, quirky farm, hand running in his own, or, or, or, or pharma having his own uh, uh, farmland. The fact that he went off to college became a doctor, psychiatrist, and then innovator, all this htic technique.

Um, was on a, on a turning point and that conversation with an art criminal who had a better idea to aspire to that, of being a gentleman that turned it all around. That means what generative change can do. When you can, when when someone has an idea that inspires them, that alter their way, they behave, they feel, they see the world systematically.

That can be such a powerful thing when it’s in the healthy sense. It can be a really destructive thing of course, when it goes in the unhealthy direction too. Does that make sense? It does. It does. So to, I, I love the aspect of setting something in motion and letting it continue. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s the idea of the slow burning fuse, right? Yeah. Which we wonderfully, uh, can go back to that loop though of there you were in that, uh, in the training of law . Yes. Um, and, and if you’ve got a couple of moments here, I want to continue that story there. Sure. To bring it back into that, uh, that scope of getting into all of this.

Yeah. What was that next step for you? Where, where did the hypnosis then start to take back over, would you say? Okay, so, so at college is the time to experiment and so on. That’s the bit where I really grew as a hypnotist. I, you know, I bought a few doy manuals. Uh, before college in my, you know, 16, 17 years old, I had to scour old bookstores for these and these, by the way, these were pathetic manuals.

These are the stuff that still had things like, you’ve gotta train your willpower by denying yourself things you want so that you’re inner power grows. And then when you look at someone and told them sleep, that, that, that the, the, that magical aura transfers. It was very numerically paced. And, and, uh, well, yes, it’s definitely not path I see further at, at college I had two, uh, advantage, well, three advantages.

One is, was a bit older, had a bit of cash. Um, secondly, I had a ton of willing volunteers. Lots of people, college students, as you well know, are some of the best economic subjects cause they’re willing to experiment and find out. Right. Um, and number three, I had access to an actual library where, you know, real hypnosis stuff would be there.

I was in the university town, so finding hyp. Textbooks were a little bit easier, still not very easy, but easy enough that I had my first few scripts that I could try out and so on. Um, so I tried that all throughout my university career and I did really well with that and I really enjoyed it. But then by the time I graduated, it was time to become a lawyer cuz you know, I had to make an income and I had no idea how to do this.

So, you know, after four years of law, my mind was already constantly being massaged towards being a lawyer. Right. Um, of all the people in my, my peer group, right. I think about, um, I know 60 to 70% of them became lawyers of one type or another. In other words, barristers or solicitors. There’s a split profession in the uk of course.

Mm-hmm and about, uh, I dunno, 28% or so want go into banking, uh, starting with a law and then going into. Uh, some kind of merchant banking or cattle finance or something like that. It was a very typical transition. Uh, 10% of people had no idea what we wanted to do. I lost track with them. I have no idea they near become dishwashers or I don’t know what

Um, the point is it, it, it kind of Steve’s unit certain direction. And this the direction I definitely took up. I ended up working for a law firm. Um, it’s a, a magic circle firm, so one of the top firms in the uk. Uh, I used hypnosis to prepare myself for the interviews and so on, so I definitely punched a little bit above my.

And, uh, I was very fortunate to get the, the job that I did. And then for the next, uh, three years or so, law was my thing, right? Uh, and as far as I was PO concerned, I put the hypnosis tools aside. Again, I thought I might use ’em as a little bit as a, to gimme an edge to make partnership and so on more quickly.

But I was dedicated to being a lawyer. Let’s fast forward a year in, a year in, uh, all the schmoozing is over. In other words, the golden handshakes, the parties, the, the welcome to law firm. Look how amazing life’s about to be. Have more alcohol, have more free stuff here. You know, that all dried up within the first couple of months, and then the hearts logged began.

And, um, I forgot a year or so I noticed that, uh, really interesting phenomenon. Um, I, I wasn’t seeing my regular friends anymore because my hours were crazy. You know, I was working till 10 o’clock at night most nights. Um, working till three or four in the morning was relat routine. I’d do at least once or twice a week.

Um, two outta four weekends were spent at the law firm. So this was a, this amount, a lot of my energy, a lot of my. A lot of my life and the only people I started hanging out with were the lawyers cuz they were the same schedule as me. Right? If I wanted to get a drink with someone, I had to go to drink with someone who.

was currently as busy and just had to slip it in the same times that I did or whatever it might be, right? Um, so after about a year of this, I got really frustrated with this. I started thinking, Do I love law enough to want to live like this? In other words, to live like this, you have to love it so much that you get all your life needs fulfilled from that space.

And for me, that wasn’t the case. So then I start thinking about back on my hypnosis days, my college days really about what the things I enjoyed doing. Uh, one of ’em was martial arts, but I couldn’t do that as a lawyer. I just couldn’t, I couldn’t practice, you know, there’s no, no doja that’s open at 10:00 PM at night or you can get a quick workout in before going to bed , nor was there any dos I knew of that were at 6:00 AM they get your workout in before going to work.

Uh, they do exist in Japan, but not in, in, uh, the uk. Um, so that was out. So then I came across the idea of h. And that’s when I took my training more seriously. I, I had now a bit more cash so I could actually afford to pay for trainings. And, um, initially I had enrolled in like a weekend course, like one weekend a month for a year, just to have something non-law related to get my head around right.

And I really enjoyed my time there. It wasn’t the best course, uh, academically it was pretty strong. Um, technically in terms of what they could do is a little bit on the week side. They weren’t, uh, they couldn’t live up to what they were talking about as easily. You see what I mean? Um, but it was, it still was enough to get the, the, my, the, the bug bear for me.

And then I spent the next year and a half after that basically using up all of my holiday time, all my weekend times, basically any spare moment I had, I was doing hypnosis, so I was either doing law or I doing hypnosis. It got so intense that at one point I went to my friend’s, I think it was, uh, uh, I can’t remember, it was his 25th birthday party, something like that.

We were up all night drinking and partying, whatever, until, you know, uh, four or five in the morning when everyone crashed. And then at six 30, So I literally had about two hour sleep at six 30. I woke up again, got up, got myself ready. I was still my tuxedo from the big party to turn up at Mym event. You know, I, I wanna say it wasn’t very glamorous.

I turned up stinking of, of alcohol and, and, and everyone else’s cigarettes. And, you know, I was clearly a mess, but I still turned up to do my thing because that, I found it enjoyable and it gave me an, um, a break from the whole legal side of things and so on. And after about, you know, now going to, you know, the first year is just law.

The second two years are doing this. So then I decided, you know what? I’m getting so much more satisfaction out of Hyn. Then outta my legal career, I need to really think about, uh, changing tracks. So I thought about it very carefully, ended up resigning, worked my notice. So six months of notice. And then after, um, three and a half years roughly as a lawyer, I left again to set up shop on my own.

And that’s when the, uh, The next crazy leg of the adventure began. I love it. I love it. And we’ve covered so much ground here that I’d love to have you back on sometime in the future to Sure. Talk about how we learn this. I love the aspects of, again, bringing back in the silence, bringing back in that mindset of being in the moment with the client and making sure that change is moving so much further beyond, um, than even perhaps what they’ve even consciously considered what’s possible.

Right, right. Thank you. And I’d be like to have you, you’d be back here again. Just let me know sometime in the new year and uh, we’ll figure something out. Absolutely. And I know you’re easy to track down, but where’s the best pace place that people can go to learn more about your work online? Thank you. So, so the easiest places Hypnosis Training Academy is uh, uh, uh, company if you like.

So www dot hypnosis training academy dot. All one big long word, real simple. We have hundreds, not thousands of articles on there by now. Couple of free bees. Uh, basically if you, if you like the kind of way I approach work, that’s a place you’ll find, uh, pretty much all the other things that I do from outstanding.

Thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me and, uh, really enjoy the conversation today.

Jason, Lynette here, and as always, especially this time around, thank you so much for joining me on this program, for sharing it online, leaving your reviews, and, uh, everything good you do. In concerning the, uh, 50 shades of purple brand of work smart hypnosis, I’d reference, uh, two things for you to check out.

First of all, again, head over to work smart hypnosis.com/. Igor, I G O R. Head over to that specific page, and that’s gonna give you the opportunity to get full access to the three part interview series where Igor interviewed me. Then also join me in Las Vegas at Hypnotic Products Tuesday and Wednesday after Hypno Thoughts Live 2018, August 28th and 29th, you’re gonna learn how to design, launch, market, and promote and profit from your own hypnotic products.

It’s a live hands on interactive course, and you will leave with the blueprint to go out there and create your own high quality hypnotic products. Check it out, hypnotic products.com. Keep listening. Let’s make another 150 of these. Sound good? See you next time. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.