Session #192: James Brown, the Professional Opportunist

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This is the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast, session number 192. James Brown, the professional opportunist. 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. So imagine you’re sitting at a hypnosis convention and there’s somebody up on stage giving a presentation and the emergence pattern rather than the standard.

In a moment, I’m gonna count from one to three. This is what’s gonna happen. Or at your own time when your eyes open, notice how good you feel. The standard dialogue that we would all often use. Instead, by way of proving a point his, uh, emergence pattern is instead, go ahead and go through whatever mental voodoo you feel is necessary to bring yourself out of whatever you’re calling this thing.

And then the client’s eyes open up. Well, that was, uh, my first live introduction to James Brown, who joins me on the program here today, which, uh, the backstory to this is it was a very fascinating, if not slightly polarizing, uh, dialogue that he introduced in his presentation. When I was, uh, back in London at the UK Hypnosis Conference in 2018, a presentation was, I’m gonna have him give you a little bit of a play by play of some of the themes in this dialogue.

We’re about to. In terms of how doing very powerful instant inductions and tions basically without any technique behind it. Just kind of looking at what are some of the elements that are actually making the hypnotic experience work. How is it we can look at the process as an art? How is it we can begin to break away some of the, as he would call it, structured rituals, uh, of the process and really almost like a magic trick, chunk it all down to the individual ingredients and realize that the secret behind a lot of what we do is actually quite simple.

Um, a favorite moment is, uh, having that almost crisis of conscious of somebody who has lived by the phrase of learning the rules to break them. And well, James did a good job of breaking that mindset of mine and that that ability, that over time we can begin to. Different opinions, different approaches, and really different thinking behind the work that we do and the whole philosophy of the wrong list approach, which we wrap up this dialogue on in terms of, as James would call himself the professional opportunist, to look at the opportunities that are there and how do we harness it and break this all or nothing mindset that, you know, if you’re working with a client for weight loss, as soon as you break the all or nothing mindset, I, if you’re working with a client with anxiety or fear, as soon as you help them break out of that all or nothing mindset, but it’s an amazing gift.

Even bring that same dialogue to us as the hypnotist, that it’s not a matter of does the technique work or not. It’s instead, how do I pivot it from here? How? Put it into use. So check out James’s website will give the links over and the show notes [email protected]. But it’s simply P w a.academy.

That’s where you can check out his work, his recent, uh, book as well. And while you’re on the web, head over to work smart hypnosis.com forward slash training. That’s the simplest link I can give you to all the upcoming events that I’m hosting, whether it’s my live hypnosis training, my NLP trainings, as well as the online programs, plus the recently announced pre and post offerings for hypno Thoughts Live 2019.

There’s a lot of great options there to look at programs both live and online, plus some guest training events as we’re bringing Bob Burns to the states in March, 2019. Again, all these training opportunities, check them out [email protected] slash training. And with that, let’s jump directly into this outstanding conversation.

This is session number 192, James Brown, the professional opportunist.

Whoa. . Right. Okay. So, um, my, my origins in hypnosis are, I’m, I’m slightly diverse in a sense. Um, I’ve been doing magic, uh, for a good number of years and pick pocketing. I had an original background, sort of my previous life as it were, uh, within, within the medical profession, uh, within psychiatry, psychiatric nursing.

Um, uh, but, but by the time I, I’d been doing magic for maybe eight years, five, five to eight years, uh, I stumbled across some chap who wanted to learn. In fact, Paul Dawkins is the guy’s name, uh, who known to some hypnotists here in the uk, I dare say. And he wanted to learn, uh, pick pocketing, theatrical pick pocketing.

And, and I sort of had a vague interest in hypnosis, but very much at a distance. And I said, Well, I tell you what, why don’t we, why don’t we spend a day together? Um, I can, you know, I can spend half the day explaining, uh, pick pocketing to you. You can spend half the day, uh, explaining hypnosis to me. And I thought this was a, a fair exchange.

Uh, he went first actually. And, and bearing in mind this is, oh, goodness knows how many years ago now, but bearing in mind it was the very traditional sort of classic state hypnosis framing, um, you know, um, pre-talk induction. Mm. Uh, deepen a suggestion. Wake up. The, the, the classic, the classic setup. Uh, and, uh, he, he sort of gave me the information, but I was interested in, in, in sort of the periphery of it, you know, what was really going on, what was making it work.

Uh, what was interesting was when it came to my turn, I essentially said at the beginning of my half of the afternoon, um, well, I’m, I’m about to kind of say pretty much the same thing back to you. Um, and all the way through the morning I’d been seeing these, these strong parallels between, uh, the hypnosis and, uh, and the pick pocketing, which might not make sense to somebody on the surface of it.

Yeah. That’s something we gotta explore here, . Yeah. Yeah. Um, the other thing that, that was interesting, and this is something that. So I’ve talked about on a number of occasions, one of the effects of, uh, so let, let me jump back in here a second. Then there was a, maybe about a five year gap. And I, and I dabbled here and there and, you know, I was doing the, the, the sort of, you know, inducing hypnosis and I was, I was pretty good at it.

And then I met Adam Eon, um, 15 years ago now, probably, um, at some, some business, uh, breakfast meeting. Uh, I was there as a magician. He was obviously there as a H therapist. Um, and. Then things started to grow because suddenly I had access to somebody who, who had a, a, a, a better depth of knowledge. Um, and, uh, and, and then we started doing some work together.

You know, he obviously recognized a sort of a flare, if you like, for the, for the art. Uh, because by the way, I see hypnosis as an art primarily. Uh, it’s something that, uh, that, that, that you can be very creative in doing that, um, uh, that is more, far more than a set of, um, uh, structured rituals. Uh, in fact, I’m, I’m very much against the structured rituals approach, but there we go.

Um, so, so yeah, that was, that was it. The big thing for me in all of this, uh, along the way was I brought my, my thinking as a magician. Now, what people don’t necessarily realize or certainly don’t think about is that, uh, The way that magic works is if you meet a magician, and particularly when you see a magician on television or on stage, when the magician tells you how the magic was done and, and sort of, you know, seemingly pulls back the curtain and shows you the secret, they are almost certainly lying to you.

Mm-hmm. , almost certainly not always, but almost certainly that the, the, the explanation as to how the magic works is usually in and of itself another layer of misdirection and another layer of theater. And, um, as a result of this knowledge and, and, and the passion I have for, for magic and for deception and for, for perception, I’ve become very acutely aware of, of things.

That sound like and, and, and, and looked like, uh, the, the sort of the magical obfuscation that we use. And when, when I first started to look into hypnosis, all of the explanations for what hypnosis was and how it worked, um, you know, the trance depth, all of these things, it all sounded to me like the BS I would tell somebody when explaining how a magic figure Yeah.

And, and no, no matter how much it worked, and no matter how successful I was in, in, in pursuing, uh, the subject, there was always this niggling doubt, this voice in the back of my head that just was screaming at. This is a magic trick. You know, you, you, you, there’s, there’s something wrong with this. There’s, you know, and back to the idea of magic.

The real answer to magic is, is usually, um, painfully simple. It’s, it, it’s, it’s dressed up theatrically to make it more exciting than actually the truth is, uh, you know, if I’m, if I’m reading your mind, uh, the, the sad truth of is that, uh, either I’m guessing, uh, or I already know, or I found out somehow, uh, and those are really du answers.

So we have to create Right. And, and just to give some context here, I mean this might even bring us, cuz I, I, I had a background in magic before in mentalism, before getting into hypnosis. And then the hypnosis is what took over, uh, though I’d mentioned, and it’s the, uh, it’s the quote of, uh, someone who may be a cross connection here, previous guest here on the podcast, a lot new that, I think it was his quote of, uh, don’t NLP on my leg and tell me it’s raining

Which, which goes back to I am reading, I am reading your body language and I am reading your eye contact. And that’s how I told you the name of your friend when meanwhile no, I peeked at the piece of paper when you weren’t looking. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That it comes back to a very simple thing.

And yeah, I, I love this connection of this dialogue to structured rituals that, you know, there, there may be some value to learning the rituals of the hypnosis process in order to learning the rules to break the rules. At times that, you know, we do our induction, now we do our deepeners, now we’re into the suggestions.

Yet the, the deeper someone gets into this field, the more they realize the entire process is about that hypnotic suggestion. Yeah. You see, I’ve, I’ve gotta be honest, I’m, I, I’ve never, I’ve never quite bought this argument of, you know, somebody has to learn the rules to break them. Mm-hmm. , um, it, it, it, to me that sounds like, uh, a sort of a self justifying argument.

It sounds like the kind of thing that you create after the fact to justify why you wasted all that bloody time learning the rules in the first place. Oh, I like it. I, I stopped. I’m not convinced that that’s actually true. I think that you can, um, In fact, I’m not, I don’t just think I know because cuz Danny, my business partner and I have actually done this with at least 10, 10 people that we’ve personally mentored to understand hypnosis from scratch.

And we didn’t introduce them to the rituals, we didn’t introduce them to this structure. We started off with, right, this is, this is what we think is going on in the very basic sense. And then we just built a picture around that. Um, and, and sort of, you know, as it were once, once they, once they understood it, we sent them out into the world.

And, and you know, certainly five of them have made a very successful career out of, uh, out of, you know, hypnosis or we, we, we, we, we kind of used this term reality bending because we just feel it’s slightly, it’s a better descriptor mm-hmm. , uh, than the word hypnosis. It’s got less baggage for a start. Um, but, but, but the idea that they’d have to have learned the bad habits to then to then be able to unlearn them later just doesn’t make.

Mean, it doesn’t even make sense, does it? Why, why, why teach somebody bad habits? Just just so in the future you can free them up to not to use those, to not have those habits anymore. You know, just don’t teach them the damn bad habits to begin with. Or, or, or at least teach them better habits. Teach the, teach them, teach them to understand, uh, what’s going on.

And my immediate, my immediate thought to that would be that sometimes there is the scenario, then again, this goes back to the original concept where, and I can think of a client just yesterday that had a preconceived notion as to how the process was about to go. That i’d, I’d quote someone like Richard non guard who talks about when you’re doing a five to one deepener, uh, there’s this sort of innate ability that they’ve seen the Dracula movies and part of the mind is going, Oh, that’s right.

That’s what hypnotists. So there is that aspect of delivering some of the expectation of the experience the way that there were some who would be of a conversational hypnosis process that unless there’s the conscious hook to hang the process off of, they may be wondering, was I actually experiencing hypnosis when we, we could know from our side of it, we’ve got the change in motion.

We’ve got something in action here yet to actually satisfy that conscious aspect of, yes, that was the hypnosis part of what we. Perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, you know, this is why I like, But, but so to me, actually, the irony is this, this fits into this notion of freedom. Uh, yes. In the lecture I gave at the U uk H c I talk about this idea of, of looking at all of these approaches as a buffet.

Um, and the question is, uh, have you, have you, uh, limited yourself to only one section of the buffet? Yes. Or are you actually free to, to, to, to, to dine out, you know, wherever you like. And, and just to rewind back here, that that dialogue that you gave around the buffet metaphor is the moment I went, I gotta have this guy on the podcast.

For those that weren’t there. Can you, uh, reiterate what that was? Yeah. Well, so. Um, stepping back really a little bit further, I, I, I have, um, I made a point at the, uh, at the UK hypnosis, uh, uh, convention that, that I, I, there’s, there’s a fear that I have around the hypnosis community, which has become very, very religious.

It’s become very doctrinal, uh, that, you know, there’s, there’s groups of people following a leader and, you know, there, there’s, there’s, there’s bands of, um, uh, of sort of apostles and, and almost profits of, of these particular people. Um, and while I’ve got nothing against, you know, learning from, from certain sources and, and even following the people that you, you admire, the danger is when it becomes religious.

Mm-hmm. to the extent. Everybody else is wrong. That, that, you know, using the, the, the religious parlance, you know, we have the truth and everybody else, uh, you know, they’re all sinners and demons and whatever else, and, and, and that kind of us and them. Um, Uh, polarized thinking, uh, which sadly is fairly pervasive in the world today anyway, uh, is definitely within the hypnosis community.

Uh, you know, we are right there wrong. Um, uh, and, and I actually think that’s very limiting and it’s very dangerous for, for lots and lots of reasons. And I likened the idea to look, you know, this, this is a big buffet. You know, there, there are, there are things that taste good to me. There are things that don’t taste good to me.

Um, why not? Why not have all of the buffet available? And I can just go and pick and choose to what suits me, what suits my palette, uh, what works best for me. And also bearing in minds that actually my, my tastes will and undo change that Just because, just because I didn’t like this today doesn’t mean in, in a few years time, I shouldn’t come back and try it again.

Because actually it, it might taste better. I might know something that I didn’t know now that I do know then, and so on. And it’s just about this, this ability to pick up and let go. Uh, and, and the link I made to religion, uh, was, was actually the idea of identity. Uh, and this was the discussion that I’d had in the past with Jorgen, um, uh, and Martin Taylor and a few others, was this idea of, you know, does, does what you do as a hypnotist or a hypnotherapist, does that dis define who you are?

Is, is that, is that all you are? Um, If it is, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve tied your very sense of self up with, uh, not just what you do, but specifically what you do, then to change your mind on something or let go of something, means sacrificing a sense of self. Which is why I think that people are, are scared to do that.

You know, people have invested huge amounts of time and money and their own identity in following this particular doctrinal path. So if anything comes to, to knock it slightly or even destroy it, cuz there are, you know, you know, whether we like it or not. Certain, certain things that we’ve believed as hypnotists for decades, science is now saying no and here’s the evidence for it.

Yeah. Now, now, now should we, you know, for me, I don’t have a problem letting go of this stuff at all. I mean, you know, there are things that I believe, there are things that I absolutely firmly believed 10 years ago without a doubt about hypnosis. And then, you know, that pesky thing called evidence came along

So I went. That’s fine. You know, that that didn’t mean that I didn’t, that that didn’t mean that I had to stop making use of it. I just had to stop believing it was happening for that reason. But also, I mean, to look at it from the perspective that, uh, to come out of it to realize that, you know, back to the magic example, uh, I may have thought, Oh, let’s use a simple example that for whatever, um, for whatever strategy that you’ve used to somehow figure out a hidden piece of information, whether it’s a word that someone’s looked at in a book or a name that someone’s thought of the, the strategy to go, Okay, if I’m thinking of your first name, James, um, I just want you to scramble up those letters in your mind and, uh, focus on one of those letters.

You’re focusing on the letter m. Aren’t you? Which is just a bit of a guess just by intuition. Yeah. There’s not much to it other than, than that strategy. And it’s where to ask, you know, a dozen people in a room, how was it? I, I was able to pick that up and someone’s gonna have some sort of more esoteric description of that.

Someone else is gonna have a very simple, logical explanation. And, and to some degree everybody is kind of right. So I, I love that nuance you just mentioned there of not necessarily dismissing everything was, that was there before, but almost using it to a different degree. Cuz now kind of going deeper into it, seeing that, well maybe something else was going on inside of this and it, because I can highlight that, I can do it a little bit better now.

Yeah. And, and being, you know, and being willing not to be, um, Uh, you know, to be absolute in the moment, but allow that moment to change as well. So I think it’s important that we, as human beings, it’s important that we own our belief. That we actually have a real sense of, Okay, this is what I think, and I’m gonna, uh, you know, I, I’m, I’m, um, you know, to fight my corner, to stand up for what I think is right.

I think that’s a, that’s an admirable and courageous, um, uh, tool, uh, an attitude for, for a human being. This may be a much, this may be a much deeper question though, which would be that, uh, I, I find extreme passion and delight in the moment of finding out I was wrong. Uh, so it’s where in recent years, here, here’s a moment where, Here’s a school of thought that I just no longer agree with.

Here’s a, here’s a product that I sold thousands of dollars of. And I took the thing off the market to then redo it because the way that I originally taught it, I was wrong. Here’s um, here’s a whole, you know, school of thought, a whole organization that I used to align with and saw that everyone else moved forward and they were moving backwards and recognizing that any decision I make, you know, the delight of not just to the entire profession, but the people who have spent time with me in a classroom, I get to answer to those people as well.

And it’s not that statement of, No, I was wrong. It’s instead the, well, here’s this evolution of the process and seeing that this one way of getting into it, you know, may not be the only way to do. But that’s also, so, so, um, using, using the magic reference again, um, you know, there’s been lots of things where, uh, I, I’ve learned how to do a move a, a slight of hand, particularly with Cloud Magic, which is sort of the area that I spend a lot of my time in.

Uh, so I’ll, I’ll spend, I mean, months and I mean months of hour after hour after hour of practicing something to get really good muscle memory, uh, of a very difficult, slight of hand technique. And then after maybe working it for a few years and really owning it, one of my friends will come up to me and go, Oh, there’s a, there’s a much easier way and more efficient way to do this, and they’ll show me that new way.

And I don’t look at it of, you know, you know, I’m not sort of thinking, Well, I’ve got to ignore this now because I’ve invested so much in what I already knew. My, my response is, Yay. Brilliant. You know, that’s fantastic. I’m so pleased. And let’s bring that into the hypnosis dialogue here, that suddenly now it’s not that the old method is no longer good, it’s that you have a different method now.

And for whatever reason in the magic world, maybe in this, in this environment of performance, the angles are not right for you to use that new method or for whatever reason. Uh, the same as you may find working with a client. This school of thought that I’m now sort of ascribing to and looking at, uh, when suddenly here comes the client who they sit down and they deliver that amazing hypnotic contract that just simply says, Oh, if I could fill in the blank, this would be a whole lot easier.

And they’ve just described that old technique you used to use. That’s, that’s the time to pull it out. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And this is, this is why I think that there’s, there’s, um, there’s almost, I I, I’ve always said there’s a couple of layers to this. A, a comment I made to, uh, to Adam Eaton about. May, maybe up to sort of five, six years ago now was, um, I believe we should be, uh, scientific evidence based in our research and development.

And by that I mean, uh, to, to actually have the science, the scientific mind, which is to be, um, as objective as we as subjective human beings can be. So, so, uh, you know, we’re, we’re we, we try and disprove our theories rather than go out to prove them. Correct. We, we use the scientific method of, of disproving.

Um, you know, we, we are, we, we are eager to be wrong. We are, we are excited by, uh, anything that, that expands our knowledge further. And that should be our mindset, However, In our, in our use of hypnosis, we should be as creative as possible. And I think those are two kind of slightly separate entities that, that when I’m, when I’m performing, um, uh, hypnosis, uh, for theatrical purposes, I tend to use it for, but I do still do a little bit of therapy as well.

Um, uh, that to me is the time where, uh, I can sort of, I, I can put, I, I can, I can bring into being everything that I’ve learned and everything that I know, but I can listen and be in, be, you know, be intent, uh, with the person that I’m, I’m working with, um, and be observant of, uh, of what they do and how they do it, and, and just help them paint this wonderful mental picture.

You know, bring everything to bear in this moment. And if that means dipping into a technique that personally I think is nothing more than, um, A placebo. Mm-hmm. , uh, then I will, because it, it, it’s, it’s gonna work. It’s gonna, it’s gonna be useful. You know, I’m gonna, I’m gonna pay attention to the person’s culture, their background, their religious beliefs.

Uh, you know, I, I, I worked with somebody not that long ago, um, who was, um, uh, a very, very dav out, uh, Catholic. And they had a, a really strong belief in, uh, in demons as being the, uh, uh, you know, the cause of, of, of, of ills in the world. And it was, it was their distance from God that meant that they were, they were feeling that the things that they were feeling.

Um, so essentially I just used those as great metaphors to, to help them, um, rethink and learn from a situation and, and, and, you know, reorder their thoughts and their ideas in, in a, in a very hypnotic fashion. So, so just because, you know, and I’m not sitting there going, No, no, no, this is just a placebo grow up.

Cuz that’s not gonna have the, the positive effect. But it, it’s a, again, sort of, cuz I find it easy to, to think along the magic lines. The danger to me is, is do we end up believing the lies ourselves? And this is the, this is the, the little sort of crossover that I fear with some hypnosis. Uh, I, I think that hypnotist, because maybe they’ve just grown up with hypnosis in a clinical setting.

Um, um, you know, within, within hypnotherapy and they went to a school and they learn hypnotherapy. I. And, and I know that, that, that people might not like me saying this, but I think it’s dangerous to forget that hypnosis, the history of hypnosis has an awful lot more in common with the deceptive arts, um, uh, than we like to admit in the way that it’s presented, the way that we use it.

The whole mechanism of, look my eyes and sleep deeper and deeper, and everything that’s come from that, which isn’t, which is a huge amount of therapy. You know, the people listening to this as therapists may, may think, Oh, I’ve never said sleep and I’ve never said, Look in my eyes, but actually take what you do and look at it objectively and think actually the, the, the whole theatrical frame of this is still within this mystical world.

That, that I am able to delve into your subconscious mind and I’m able to implant suggestions and make changes. It’s, it’s very, Psychic mediumship. It, it’s, it’s all within that field, and I think we have to be cautious. It’s so easy to, to step across a line where you actually start believing the stuff that you’re saying in the wrong way.

And, and I’m rambling slightly. Well, I think the thing to, the thing to highlight there is that while there may be some that completely would hear that statement and go, That’s not right, that’s not what I’m doing. It’s to pull back for a moment, and as I would phrase it sometimes to look at, society has now presented this role as the hypnotist.

We have this profession that people will call up a hypnotist. I can think of practically any client I’ve seen over the last, let’s call it out, 10 years or so that has come in and part of their initial. Decision making strategy was that they have a perception as to what we do. They have this idea in their mind that this is that role that we serve, and they see us as someone who can deliver that, who can help assist in that.

And yes, there’s gonna be some, you know, sliding scale to this. Here’s the one who, um, calls me up and says, Hey, I saw the movie Get Out. Um, I want you to do that to me so I can quit smoking. Don’t do the brain thing, but you know, just do the stop smoking bit. Yeah. And he’s calling and from a bit of a playful place, there’s some truth behind that request that he’s seeing that this is an ability that we have.

We have this, you know, evolutionary psychology mindset that society and just evolution has given us this ability to go into this place in our minds. Uh, so to, to then be there with a client and not harness. In some way appropriately would always be my phrasing here. You know, I’m not putting on, um, dark eyeliner makeup and having a low rolling fog and presenting the theatrical environment of something absolutely mystical, but I’m delivering, um, I’m flashing to a moment of a magic convention years ago where Max Maven is in the audience looking at someone on stage with the same damn makeup and going, Huh, , but there’s a reference.

There’s a reference. 5% of the audience will get here. But to look at again, you know, this place that we are there, there’s an experience that we are also assisting to deliver that at its core. I love the dialogue back to, you know, back to the evidence that, you know, let’s actually put in techniques that actually work as opposed to just dressing that presents the expectation that it should work.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, using, uh, Using the, the theatricality as a device, as a, as a tool to, to enhance somebody’s experience isn’t a bad thing. You know, writers, filmmakers, um, uh, screenplays, actors, this world, um, you know, history is full of an understanding that human beings love stories and, and the way that we tell stories, the way that we create the light and shade around the stories is incredibly important.

Um, the. But as long as you understand that, that this thing that you’re doing is about creating this, this picture rather than my issue. I think really my issue with a lot of hypnotic stuff always comes back to this notion of what I’ve, what I’ve always referred to as the belief, the belief in spells and rituals.

That, that, you know, there’s a difference between saying, well, there are certain words and phrases and actions and, and, and gestures that are really good at creating emotions and feelings and expectation in people and saying that there is something intrinsically magical about. Um, so, so, you know, it’s this idea of when somebody teaches an in.

and they teach a very specific, you know, that you, you take the handle like this and you move it to this position and the elbow is turned just here. And you say these precise words at this precise tone. And, and I’m thinking, Well, hang on a minute. The suggestion here is, the implicit suggestion here is that unless you follow these perfectly, it doesn’t work ago.

There is something specifically magical about the induction, about, you know, about the, the, the ritual of the moves and the, uh, the, the, the, the words. Now, the moment, the moment that you suggest that if I say these special words at this, in this special way, uh, it, it has this magical outcome. Well, you’re talking about a.

And this is where I start to, you know, the hairs on the back of my neck go up a little bit and I think, well, hang on a minute. No, that, that, you know, we we’re now, we’re now confusing effect with cause and I think an awful lot of the things in hypnosis are, um, that, that we label as, Oh, this is what makes it work.

I think we’re, we are looking at the effect not at the cause. And the cause is something much simpler, much more every day, um, much more, um, uh, you know, easy to understand. Um, and, and, and actually helpful. And I think that’s the point. I think that, uh, the more we strip away the ritual from hypnosis, the more beneficial it becomes.

And one of the reasons for that is that, you know, if you walked into a, a room of 10,000 people, a big stadium of 10,000 people, . And if you said right, you know, we, we are just gonna separate you out straight away. So line down the middle. Uh, who thinks hypnosis is inherently good? Who thinks it’s inherently bad?

You would, I dunno what the percentage would be, but you would split the room. There’d be no doubt about it. There would be a, a, a massive people that would think it was wrong and a massive people who think it, right? And maybe a group of people who kind of didn’t know I one way or the other. Now if you subdivide those down again and you start asking more questions, you divide the room even further.

You know, who thinks that hypnosis is fundamentally about controlling that? They see it as the, you know, what I refer to as the dark Lord character, The, the, you know, the max even, uh, look, um, and again, you would split the room down again. Now here’s where the problem lies. If you present. If you are presenting and, and, and obviously it appeals to some, just like the guy who contacted you and said, I’ve seen the film get out.

Could you do that to me? Well, clearly he has belief in that, but not enough to scare him. Yet that film itself will have caused an awful lot more people to have decided never to contact a hypnotist because it simply either created or reinforced the belief that hypnosis is somehow a dangerous thing, that it is, you know, in the wrong hands, it could be used badly.

Now, this is one of the reasons why about five years ago, I stopped using, uh, the, the, the idea of hypnosis in, in, in, in my performance as in the word hypnosis. And I also stripped away as many of the identifying markers as I possibly could. I stripped away the, the, the tonality. Um, you know, that sort of take, you know, you know, you know what I mean?

That sort of, uh, I think Adam, Adam calls it the hush fm hypnotist voice. Yeah. Uh, I stripped away that I stripped away, The eyes closed. I stripped away the, the, the, the idea of relaxation. That everything was about, you know, calming everything down. Um, I stripped away most of the, uh, the, the, the, the hypnotic language, the, the, the identifying hypnotic language markers.

And particularly I stripped away the idea of me controlling you in anything other than a, a very, a very playful, impish way. Um, none of none of these things removed, by the way, made a toss of difference to the outcome. I still do exactly the same stuff that I used to do when I did formal inductions sleep and deeper deepen.

The whole lot. Yeah. I can still get to, uh, uh, to hallucination as fast as I could before. There’s, there’s no changes being made on the efficacy level. Just to pause you there for a second, I’m curious to ask, you had to kind of give just a base level sort of description of a user experience. Um, what would that, what would that look like in terms of describing that you’re able to hit the same results but without all the ritual?

Uh, uh, Are you talking about, you know, stepping you through what I do, or are you talking about Yeah. Uh, just a basic description of, uh, what you would do to, to satisfy that same result. Um,

I mean, I, I, the truth of the matter is I go almost immediately into, uh, uh, some level of a demonstration, uh, with, with the individual. I, I, I do, you know, what might be referred to as, um, you know, a set piece, uh, you know, the hand stick or an eye lock or something like that. But I go, I go in like pretty much instantaneously.

There’s very little setup, save, um, uh, one explanation. Um, and it’s the explanation of, uh, you know, I’m gonna ask you to imagine something, but when I say imagine it, I don’t just mean think it, I mean, feel and experience it too. The way I imagination works is not just the thought in our head, but it’s actually creating the illusion of something with our own body.

Let me give you an example. Um, if I held my arm out, and I, and I imagine it’s being, you know, held up by maybe a piece of string connected to the ceiling. I could simply think about it or I could allow my arm to, to take on the physiology as if it were hung up. In other words, I’d have the point of contact to the ceiling.

I’d take all the way out of my arm. I would allow my arm to feel, you know, as if it was held up. Uh, so that if I was looking away, genuinely, not only can I imagine the piece of string, but I can actually feel my arm behaving as if it’s connected. And I, and I just set up this idea that, that implicitly what I’m saying is I’m, I’m doing everything I possibly can to create the illusion for myself that it is.

So I’m over, I’m overexplaining the, the, the, the as if principle basically. Yet I, I have to ask, is that, is that a suggestion, just like the original framework? No, I don’t think it is. It’s, there’s no suggestion in that. I’m simply telling you what you need to do. Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m informing you what’s going on before we do anything.

Because part of the problem a lot of the times, uh, in my experience, uh, and what I think accounts largely for this kind of, you know, one in five, two in five, um, numbers that hypnotists tend to throw out of one in five people is, you know, people you meet with some ambul list and one in five people can’t be hypnotized.

I mean, I dunno if I’m allowed to swear on this podcast, but it’s bullshit. Oh, go for it. It’s absolute bullshit. It’s, again, it’s one of these, um, uh, excuses that is made after the fact justify what’s happened rather than because it’s actually got meaning to it. Um, well, I mean, it’s the same dialogue of, um, you know, the resistant client.

It’s now, it’s a result of a lack of rapport and a lack of flexibility on the practice practitioner. And I, and, and my experience says that, that for the majority of situations, uh, there are a handful of reasons why somebody doesn’t have an experience. Uh, I believe that everybody can be hypnotized, just not everybody will choose to be hypnotized under the circumstances at the time.

I think those do very different ideas. Um, and the latter makes more sense. And one of the reasons why somebody doesn’t get hypnotized is in fact the most common reason in my estimation, is that they actually don’t understand what their role is, what their part to play is. Because if you. Um, so, so again, it, it’s this idea of if you believe that hypnosis, if you believe in hypnosis as a, as a, as a ritual and a spell, you believe that you are doing hypnosis to somebody that you have a power over somebody else by means of some ritual or spell that you, that you, that you en, you know, enchanted them with.

If you on the other hand believe that it, that’s not what’s happening and there is something more scientific, more natural going on, then it stands to reason that it’s the person that’s actually doing all of the heavy lifting you are. Uh, I love the analogy of the actor director. You are the director as the hypnotist.

They are the actor. You are simply directing them to. But it’s up to them to be a good actor or not. And unfortunately, a lot of the time we simply rely blindly on the frame of hypnosis to work. You know, I’m a hypnotist, I’m a hypnotherapist. Let’s do these various games that kind of do something, but not necessarily anything special.

You know, the eye fixation, the, the, the, the various sort of hand clasps, et cetera. But even the things like magnetic hands, even classic things like magnetic hands won’t do anything unless the person actually understands what it is you’re asking them to do. if, if, you know, if they just hold their hands out in front of them and they don’t get that they actually have to, uh, you know, engage in this, that they actually have to think as if to allow their body to create that sensation.

Nothing will happen. I mean, it’s not because they can’t be hypnotized, it’s probably cuz they don’t understand the instructions. Well, I mean it’s where there’s, there’s a, there’s a game at times to, I mean, the power of vague language to just suggest to somebody, you can notice that feeling moving throughout you without actually labeling it.

But there does get to be a place where it becomes way too vague for someone to have any clue as to what’s going on. Um, so I even this idea of the vague language still only it either hits home by pure chance that all of the ingredients around them add up to, to understanding. Um, and there’s a lot more ingredients going on than simply your words.

And there is, um, And that was something else. I kind of, uh, I, I love, I love to tap into this when I’m at convention, so to digress slightly, but I love tapping in at this, at conventions, uh, hypnosis conventions and, and, and sort of workshop days that, that go on and NLP trainings because, uh, I walk in there and I appear to be a God amongst heists half the time because I’m walking in and I’m, you know, I’m inducing hypnosis like I did at the UK HC by flicking water in somebody’s face.

And people are stunned, you know, how is this possible? Teach us your waySo master. But what they fail to understand is actually all I’m doing is I’m making use of where we are and who we’re talking about and what’s going on, you know, to, to me, all of this is a massive, uh, bunch of suggestions and presuppositions and expectations and intentions.

Yeah. For those that weren’t there, could you just kind of give us a sort of a play by play description of what that demo looked? That you did back at, uh, back in London? Well, the great part of this is that almost everybody seemingly missed. The actual first part was I very casually and offhandedly said something along the lines of, I said, Look, I really don’t have a lot of time here, so who’s a, you know, who here’s a really great subject.

And immediately one person in front of me put their hands up and I went, Right. Perfect. You come . Uh, and as he, and as he got to the stage, um, I, I, I don’t think I did anything other than I just sort of, sort of just pushed him back into a chair and said, Sleep. Uh, there was nothing else going on. Yeah. You, you stared him in, you stared him in the eyes and you pushed him down in the chair.

And first did I, Okay. I stared at him first. Just, just to make sure that the, in that, that the in cause James, you and I know without, without the stairs. Absolutely. Yeah. That would be, Yeah. Yeah. I can’t ex I can’t ignore the magic stare. Yeah. Um, and. You know, I mean, just, just for context, I’m sure everybody listening to this must know, but the, the stare, the stare only had one purpose.

And that was just to, just to essentially say to him, write somethings about to happen. That’s all. And it’s, you know, it’s, it’s the same as when we do magic. You know, there were little moments where you pause, uh, and you pause that, that that little theatrical pause is simply because you want that little moment of, of silence so that your, your audience, your subject, your, your, your spectator just leans forward in their chair with expectations.

Something’s about to happen. And that’s all that was. Um, and then, well, this was the dialogue that you and I were having before I had record that I was talking about just, here’s a and what the technique is, doesn’t really matter for this dialogue, but here’s a technique that I’ll use with a client that I found by stepping in and doing that stare, making that eye contact.

It got a night and day difference. Yes. It’s that, it’s that scene change. It’s again, back to the movie reference of the power of melodrama. Suddenly here’s the music in the scary movie, which is winding you up, telling you something’s about to happen. Here’s, uh, back to my theater career, a moment where it’s this fun light, you know, entertaining musical and the director’s lighting it like a tragedy and.

The, the lighting design is lighting it like a tragedy and probably got fired and replaced to go, Hey guys, this is funny. And you had to light it in such a way that the audience could, the, the brightness of it was now standing out. So there’s that framing around it. , that was a, well, you, you’ll you’ll know, uh, of Luke Jma, uh, who’s a, an exceptional, uh, mind in the world of, of mentalism, of magic mentalism.

Um, and Luke talks extensively in one of his early books about the idea of the witch doctor effect. Uh, the, you know, the very simple concept that, you know, you do, you do something, uh, and you know, you, you hold that moment for long enough, and it might be something as simple as just slowly rubbing, uh, your finger and thumb together.

But you do it with such intense intent. Um, I mean, you, you, while you are doing it, you actually don’t necessarily know what the outcome of this moment of intense intent will be. But what you’re doing is you are, you are giving space to the spectator, to the audience, uh, to find the answer, to fill in that gap.

Um, because they, they, they are, you know, they are desperate to know what this means and they will fill in meaning for you, uh, if left long enough to do so. Uh, and again, I love us utilizing that in, in the hypnotic environment. As long as there is a sense, there is a frame, uh, that, that creates just the opening for a bit of expectation from them.

You can, you know, you can make anything work, uh, including as I then went on to do, uh, as a set, as another demonstration was, um, take a cup of water that I’d all but finished and just stand in silence flicking. The, uh, the chap with droplets of water from the, from the almost empty cup, uh, knowing of course that on the third time, the magic third time, uh, he would descend into this beautiful world of hypnosis.

I mean, whatever the hell that would mean to him. Uh, and of course he did. Uh, um, so, so yeah, I did, you know, using, using the their frame of references is fun, of course. Um, but moving away from, uh, so, so quickly going back to what you said, I mean, essentially my whole setup is simply everything about what I’m going to be doing is I want you to, to play a game with me.

Uh, so that my whole setup is really about, I want you to imagine something. Um, and then we are gonna create the illusion. Which is just a perfectly normal everyday thing that your brain does anyway. Uh, we are gonna create the illusion of it happening to you, which is obviously using the language of, uh, Anthony Jack, the head hacking team, uh, turning a, doing into a happening, uh, that we’re gonna ask you to imagine something, and then we’re gonna create the right environment for that to feel involuntary at some level.

Uh, and from here on in, we just, we are just working up what I call the plausibility scale. You know, we, we, we, we we’re taking things and we’re making them more and more plausible, uh, because of your experience. Um, and, you know, take something as simple as, uh, your hand, a hand sticking. Now the, the reality to a hand stick is that the way a hand stick works is because the person is pushing down with their hand.

That’s the way that the body creates the illusion of their hand being stuck by pushing down. So the only thing I need to do to create the phenomena that is stuck for real is to, is is for the person to stop realizing they’re pushing down. The moment they, they are no longer aware of pushing down is the moment where they experience it as stuck.

Um, and literally, so from, from an internal dialogue point of view, it’s that beautiful phrase that you can see it, you can see the moment in the person’s eyes, where internally they think, I can’t lift my hand. And usually for most people, there’s a, the perfect to that. Oh shit. . I can’t lift my hand. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Uh, and Danny and I actually, and our work talk about the oh shit moment. And it’s a, it’s a great moment and it’s a great moment to find because as soon as you have it, then, then, and, and now whatever frame you wanna place on it, you can place on it. You can play with that. And if you wanna make this, uh, a, a beautiful cooperative, uh, actor, director, uh, environment, you can make it that, which is kind of what we like as a frame anyway.

It’s a non-threatening frame, but from a theatrical point of view, uh, sometimes when I’m doing, uh, uh, particularly sort of, um, fun corporate shows, uh, I will play with that frame and I will, I will slowly twist it. So it starts as this wonderful, fun, light, fluffy thing that we do. But then I just slowly and carefully turn it darker and darker and darker until the end of it is very much like, um, uh, the evil puppet master.

That I, that I’m just controlling your body, that you have full con conscious awareness of all of this. So you are, it’s as if you are awake whilst your body has been taken over entirely. And I’m, I am making you move around the stage. And it’s a, it’s, it’s, it’s purposefully designed to be, uh, a frightening experience.

It’s designed to feel terribly unnerving, uh, for the participant and the audience. Uh, but don’t forget, I’ve not thrown you in the deep end of this. We’ve, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve played to this point and we ex, you know, I allow this experience and then the experience is released and the, the subject and the audience learns a great deal about what’s really happening.

Um, a about, uh, about themselves, about the sense of control, about empowerment. So there’s, so there’s a really positive message at the end of all of it. So there’s no sting in the tail, if you see what I mean. Yeah, I mean it’s looking for what I, what I’d kind of asked the question, cuz so far we’ve been in the dialogue of, uh, let’s call it a stage performance, let’s call it, um, you know, more of almost a street hypnosis kind of aspect of it.

How does this all now get over to the dialogue of personal change? We’re now, we’re moving from that place of, they’re now in that hypnotic experience, whether it’s a suggestibility type experience or the incident tions. How does that now translate in your, in your mind towards the fact that people are able to make these rapid changes with hypnosis?

Because, uh, so simply because I, I look at all of this as, um, so, so none of the things that I’m doing, none of these structured things that I’m doing, uh, are important to me at all. None of them are, none of them are doing anything. Mm-hmm. , uh, beyond, uh, beyond. Um, being in and of themselves, just another suggestion to help paint the picture in the person’s mind.

So why does this help me from a therapeutic point of view? Well, because it gives me a real sense of freedom. But we can look up, we can look at what the issue is, and we can play with it in a variety of ways. Um, and I can make it real for, for the individual, as real as they want it to be. As real as I need it to be for them, as real as they need it to be for themselves.

So we can look at various different techniques. Um, of, of, you know, repacking, um, um, sort of feelings that they have about something, uh, you know, we can, um, we can use a metaphors and, and, and it’s kind of any dip into any change work, uh, arena. Uh, and including sort of EFT tapping, you know, chan, you know, anything at all.

It doesn’t really matter to me what it is. It’s now much more about how do I, how do I help this person create something so powerful and so unique? And all of this comes down to my core belief that, that we are a collection of, uh, of imagined experiences anyway. You know, we, you know, I believe what I believe because it was suggested to me in one form or another.

Um, and because, you know, I, I, I constantly play, um, Play these tapes if you like. I, you know, every situation I’m in, uh, my, my mind is digging straight back into, into its resource pack and saying, Right, have I done this before? And can I automate as much of my response as possible to save the limited bandwidth that this poor human James Brown actually has?

Uh, you know, my mind is always out to help me. It knows I’m a little bit thick, um, and therefore it wants to make my life as easy as possible. But unfortunately, along the way, it, it, it’s automating lots of, lots of shitty programs that, that aren’t really helpful to me. Um, so the benefit of all of this is that we can, we can play with various ways of, of, of changing the story of, of altering, um, altering the way I feel about something.

Uh, reprogramming if you like, uh, the thoughts and the feelings, um, so that I can, I can play a better script the next time round. Um, you know, we could tell me if this is a para, Tell me if this is a fair paraphrase. That basically it’s through the use of hypnotic suggestion to create an alternate experience.

It’s kind of breaking away the reality of. How solid that problem was, that, you know, we’re kind of going deeper down that hole in terms of here’s a different way that we can experience this world around us, and that that original issue wasn’t as solid, that wasn’t as real of a story as we previously held onto.

Absolutely. I mean, I, I, I, I have a firmly, the reason we, Danny and I called it reality bending, was that all the research that we’ve done, uh, all the neuroscience study that we’ve done over the last five or 10 years, uh, has pointed us to that. You know, the reality that we experience is not the reality that is, um, it is a meta reality.

It’s a filtered reality. You know, the, um, even down to something as simple as our eyesight is only taking a, taking in a fraction of what we think it’s taking in. And our minds are creating a positive illusion, um, uh, a positive hallucination, uh, to fill in the gaps. And, and when we come together as, as, as people, and we have conversations, and we, um, you know, we, we act very tribal by, by nature of gravitating towards people who, who, who we think see the world the way that we do.

Uh, we solidify this, this reality as a shared experience. Um, And, and when you start adding all of that up, you realize that actually, you know, in fact, I think the best way to put it is my, my blessing, my grandma decades ago, and she’s longs instead now. My grandma used to say, uh, there’s what I think, there’s what you think, and then there’s the truth.

And, and what she was really getting at was the idea that none of us have access to that third part. Yeah. None of us do. I, there’s what I think is what you think, and then there’s the truth, but that is not, that is not in the reach of either of us. And that’s the problem, uh, that it’s, it’s, it’s perp, it’s perpetually out of our reach.

And I think reality is perpetually out of our reach. Uh, we are incapable of, of, of actually, uh, objectively experiencing it in any meaningful sense. So what we do now have to do is we, we have to, we, we now have to balance as best as we can between, uh, what we, what I think is real. . Uh, and what is actually useful, uh, I made a comment in the talk, which is a quote from somebody else, which is, uh, um, uh, the problem with the world today is that, uh, people would rather be right than be useful, and a few people mis misunderstood.

What I meant by that, and I wasn’t talking about being accurate, because being accurate is, is something to be strive for. Strive for to strive for. Yeah. What I’m talking about is the, is the subjective sense of rightness, and that includes the idea of, this is how I feel and I’m right to feel that way, you know, I’m offended and my objective, my, sorry, my subjective feelings are intrinsically important.

No, actually they’re not. The problem is that that’s, that’s the issue. You, you’d rather be right than be useful. Yeah. And we, we all have that issue within us that we’d rather be right. We’d rather say, No, this is how I feel and, and this is my reality and, and this is my life. And, and you know, and that’s, that’s the way it is.

And, and actually I think from a therapeutic point of view, a lot of what we do is helping people re um, uh, reassess their, their, their, their certainty, uh, to, to actually start to allow the, the healthy aspect of doubt. You know, the reason, the reason that you feel the way that you do is because you, you’re so damn certain that this is how you feel and that this is real.

Uh, and actually it’s, it’s a, um, well, to tap into Kin’s phrase, it’s a psychological all. , you know, you’ve created, you’ve created a world, you’ve spun a web around it so tightly that you think that this is real. And, and now you’re looking for, essentially you’ve come here because you’re looking for a magic spell, but actually you don’t need a magic spell.

You just, you just need to be willing to just have a closer look at this thing. And maybe, maybe it’s just not what you thought it was. Uh, but to do that we might have to unpack some other things. We might have to dismantle a few other things along the way. Um, what I like about the methodology that we play with is that we are not tied to a script or format.

We can, we can dip in and out of everywhere because fundamentally, the, the one thing that I’m interested in playing, Is your belief and that’s it. So all it comes down to, I believe hypnosis is a, is it works because of belief. I think it’s about belief. The experience is one of belief. Um, that’s where the magic happens.

It’s in your belief. If you don’t believe it, if you’re not interested, uh, if you’re not paying attention, if you minds elsewhere, the effect is different. Uh, but if I can, if I’ve got your belief, if I can play with your belief, then I literally have, have the keys to the kingdom, uh, um, to, to just throw in another random metaphor for you.

Um, you know, if I have your belief, I have the keys to your kingdom. I can do anything with you. I can manipulate every aspect of your being who you think you are, um, your, your past, your present, your future. Uh, that’s why I think that hypnotists are better. Uh, better served thinking about the way that they play with belief than they are thinking about the rules, the rituals, uh, the spells, um, uh, of their, of their craft, of the people that taught them.

I love it. I love it. So then to tie it all together, I love the phrasing around, um, the, the professional opportunist . Uh, what, what behind that, what is that what you define as the wrong list approach? Uh, well, okay, so the wrong list approach was, was essentially born out of, um, uh, a couple of good friends of mine in Roland, um, and Darius Zari, who who’d kind of been looking at my work and, and sort of modeling me in, in some respects.

Uh, and, and, uh, I think it was Darius came up with the idea that, you know, he referred to me as, he says, You’re an opportunist. You seem to just, you seem to just change direction when, whenever you need to and you let go of things that you don’t need and you, you know, you, you just have this way of seizing the moment, very sort of car DM in the way that you think in life performance, um, and sort of in life as well.

Uh, and I, Roland, um, coined the wrong list approach, uh, because we’d had this step, this deep conversation, and, uh, essentially I’d said that the problem I saw with, with. With people is that we are all fed into this idea of success failure, this binary outcome to almost everything that we do, right from, uh, from early age, certainly from school, uh, all the way through, through our life.

Um, you know, our love lives, our, our, our occupations. Everything is bound up in you will either succeed at the thing that you’re about to do or you will fail. Success brings all these positive feelings. Failure brings all these negative feelings. Now, there are a couple of problems of this. The first is that your chance of failure is always, uh, significantly bigger than your chance of success, because the success by definition is a much narrower, narrower, um, um, set of, uh, things to, to aim for.

Yeah. Uh, failure is much more likely. Uh, the other side is, Because of this, uh, this, this impending doom, this impending failure that could happen at any moment and all the bad, uh, you know, stress, anxiety, anxiety and weak, uh, um, uh, worry feelings that, that, that it brings, We actually drag that baggage along with us through the process.

So, um, you think about somebody who, um, who has a problem with public speaking or just doesn’t like the idea or maybe purely socially conditioned to believe that it’s something that they should be terrified about, man, that’s a different subject altogether. Um, uh, but imagine that person who’s got something to do.

The problem is the, the, the first day that their boss says, you know, in six weeks time you need to do this presentation. Uh, every time they sit down to think about it, every time they sit down to do research or to start to write ideas down. In their head, there is this battle going on with these two sensations, these two feelings, and, and there’s a good chance that the negative one is gonna, is gonna be bashing away at constantly.

So everything about the presentation, the preparation, the setup, the whole thing is, uh, has this weight of expectation. And I think it’s a, it’s just a crap model ultimately. Um, I think a much better way of thinking about these things is the, is the idea of looking at things as being, um, opportunities to enjoy myself and create joy for others.

And whatever happens, whatever happens, will, will be the right out outcome by virtue of the, the actual goal was not the outcome, but it was the, the enjoyment of the journey. And it, it might seem oversimplified and there’s a lot more work on it in the book. Um, but it’s this, this very clear idea that actually if you think differently, if you take success and failure off the, off the table right at the start, it doesn’t stop you from, from getting to a, to, to, to, you know, to the summit that you were aiming for.

Uh, it simply means that you get chance to enjoy the damn journey and you get to learn from the experience. Uh, it changes your outlook on things. Um, uh, do you Well, I mean, that’s what also makes it extremely sustainable. Yeah. As opposed to now that I’ve hit the goal, now what? Yeah. Uh, instead to, to really enjoy the process of getting there, which then has a much more natural progression to it.

Yeah. Well, to give you a very quick story on this, to give you an example of, of, of the difference, Um, a couple of years ago I did, um, a, a parachute jump, a tandem jump. Uh, friend of mine invited me to go along and do it, and we went through this process. now, uh, literally the moment, the moment he said about this, I just thought, Wow, what a great opportunity to enjoy myself.

That was, that was literally, that was the only thing I was thinking, Wow, what a fantastic opportunity to have an immense amount of fun. And, uh, every time I thought about it leading up, which initially was quite a lot, but then of course, you know, life gets in the way and, you know, we creep towards the date and I’m busy doing other things.

But every time I thought about it, I was just thinking, oh wow. The fantastic opportunity to have fun, to enjoy myself and, and think about the enjoyment I could have with other people as well before, during, and after, got to the day itself. And we went through the various training things, , and we got up into the airplane, and as we’re going up in the plane, I’m, um, I was reading a book actually.

I was, I’d, I’d got into a, a particular book that I’d been reading sort of, you know, over the, over the few days beforehand. And I thought, well, I know that there’s about. You know, there’s a lot of downtime on the, on the date. There’s a lot of sitting around doing bugger roll while you’re waiting for other things to happen.

So I thought I’ll take a book with me to read. So on the flight up, I’m, I’m reading a book, and we got to the point where they said, Right, you know, we’re nearly there, just final checks, um, attached to the, the, the, you know, the, the instructor and you getting ready to jump out. And we jumped out. And I enjoyed every second of it.

I mean, literally every moment of the whole thing. I loved it. Um, now what was interesting was the conversations I had with everybody else during the day and after everybody else who, who was on that jump that day had been excited, nervous, terrified, all wrapped up into one that they saw this as being a potential for success, but also a potential for failure.

They had that binary mentality and as a result there was, there was excitement wrapped up with anxiety. all the way up to the day on the day on the journey up. People are now starting to really get nervous and there’s a lot of like, you know, people shaking and, and, and getting feeling sick. And, uh, you know, one person even was sort of saying that they wanted to back out usual scenario by all accounts.

And there’s me reading a book, people thinking something wrong with me. But the point is, every time every one of them who jumped out of the plane missed the first 30 seconds of their descent. Hmm. Because they, they weren’t there. They weren’t there in that Yeah, they were, they were wrapped up in, in the, in the fear and the exhilaration, but they were wrapped up in that and each of them that got to the ground, there was, there was, there was one person who actually didn’t like it from, from start to finish, but that’s cuz I think she decided not to like it from start to finish.

But the majority of people, once they got going, and particularly once the shoe opened and, and that was the moment for people where the shoe opened and they felt safe again. Yeah. It’s not a big time difference between the two happening, of course. Uh, but when the shoe opened, they felt safe again. And then particularly when they landed and every, every time they, they that they, you know, this, this happened, they all said, Oh, do you know what?

I wish we could do it again because then we could enjoy it. You know, we kind of feel that we, we, we missed out on so much of the journey down cuz we were just desperate to get back on the ground. . Yeah. We were desperate to get to that, that successful outcome where we hadn’t failed. Whereas I wasn’t thinking about landing at all.

I was thinking about having fun. So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed everything about it. The lead up to the day, the day itself, the journey up in the play, Even though I was reading a book, it was delete, It was an enjoyable book. What can I say? And then, then the moment we stepped out of the plane, I was, I was present for the whole thing and I loved it.

I missed, I missed not a second. And I still have the very strong memory of the event as well. Uh, and, and, and actually this, this, this is a mentality that you can play around with, with lots of things. Uh, and I certainly use it within hypnosis. It’s why, you know, the wrongness approach is, is the foundation of what I do.

It’s the confidence that, that in what I do, uh, so. You know, people often say, Oh, what happens if the, the subject doesn’t, You know, when hypnotist is scared to test their work often because they’re, they’re scared that the, the person might lift their hand up off the table or open their eyes at the wrong moment.

Um, and that fear doesn’t affect me because, you know, I don’t look at that as being, as reflecting on me. It’s not my fault. I’m, I’m not, The outcome didn’t bother me, it was the journey. So I’m actually more likely to enjoy the challenging client, the challenging subject, the difficult spectator than I am the blind blindly obedient one.

Cuz to me, there’s no, there’s no fun in, in the, in the, you know, in the easy subject. I’ve never understood hypnotists at conventions. I mean, it’s not so much in the hypnotherapy world, but in the magic side of hypnosis, uh, you know, you go anywhere and as soon as the hypnotists find one good subject, they, they kind of queue up to have a go, one after another.

You know, And well, why we, we already know this person’s a great subject. What does this do? What does this prove other than, other than guarantee you the successful outcome that you crave? Yeah. But you won’t go to, Yeah, you won’t go over to a new table because now, now you’re worried about failure. And now I will, cuz actually I’m not even thinking about that outcome.

It’s the, it’s the, it’s the, the moment, it’s the present moment. It’s the enjoyment that we can have. The enjoyment I can create in other people. You know, if I say lift your hand and find your can’t and you lift your hand and every day around laughs Great. Now I get to do something with this it well number, right, right on the moment.

Great that they’re laughing because actually my, my desire from the start of this was to, to create joy. So you are laughing. Well, that’s a sign of, that’s a sign of joy, isn’t it? Now, now people go, Oh, but but aren’t you worried that they’re laughing at you? Well, I’m not worried about it. And no, they’re not.

They’re laughing at the situation. The only reason that I would see it is laughing at me is, is how I respond. If I respond in a, in an uncomfortable way. Now it now it very quickly turns into a laughing at me. But if I look at it that they’re laughing at the moment, the situation now, now I can be a part of that, that joy too.

Now I can in, you know, I, I’m not separated from it. I’m not at the butt end of it. Now I can join in with the enjoyment of that. And then I can play with reframing it and I can have fun with it, and I can morph it into whatever I need it to be, uh, with their help and make it a collaborative, um, endeavor.

And I find that this, there’s a huge amount of enjoyment and freedom to be had, uh, just by shifting the way that we think, um, about situations. And, you know, my favorite quote, I’ve used this so many times, it’s, um, a GK Chesterton quote, um, CK chest quote, which is, um, uh, Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.

Uh, and I think that’s a great mantra to have that, that we can have, we, we can, we can take ourselves lightly. We can have fun with this, and we can, uh, we can fly, you know, ultimately we can do incredible things, um, as hip a therapist, as hypnotists, as performers. Um, you know, as long as, as long as we learn to take ourselves lightly, we can be serious about what we do, we can be thoughtful.

Um, we can be, we can be ethical, but we, we could all, we must also take ourselves lightly along the way. Beautiful. James, where can people find out more about you online and track down the book too? Okay. Uh, so, uh, the best place to get a hold of us is www dart p o w a. Dot Academy, www dot p o w a, dot academy.

Uh, if anybody specifically wants to, uh, hit me up with some stuff about hypnosis, um, or, uh, confidence stuff or the book, you know, if you, if you wanna, if you wanna get into direct touch, then just email me, James PWA Academy and I would be delighted to start a conversation with anybody. And, uh, yeah, and spread the, Spread the love.

Spread the joy.

Jason Lyte here once again, and as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, for sharing it on your social media streams, leaving your reviews online, and once again, head over to work smart hypnosis.com/training. That’s where you can find all the upcoming live events as well as online educational programs to expand your learning and challenge these models of hypnosis and help a whole lot more people.

See you soon. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.