Session #385: What To Do When Nothing is Working

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

This is the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast, session number 385. What to do when nothing is working. Welcome to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast with Jason Linett, your professional resource for hypnosis training and outstanding business success. Here’s your host, Jason Linett that. Hey, it’s Jason Linett, and I’m gonna be rather quick in this introduction because we are about to go into the time machine and actually share the audio of a presentation that I did for the members inside of our hypnotic workers community, which specifically is what to do when nothing is working, and it’s where so often people run into this trap where the client isn’t responding to a specific technique to which, remember the principle of client centered hyn.

Is to match the process to the client as opposed to the client, to the process. Simply put, if something is not working with your client, please for all of us don’t fall into this absolute trap and blame the client or claim that they’re resistant or not yet motivated. Respectfully, even if you’re brand new to hypnosis, chances are you and I have done hypnosis more.

Then your client has, So what I’ve actually done, and this actually became a system that I’ve used for many years now, is I broke down. About seven or so specific guidelines, a bit of a internal checklist to measure what have you done so far in your session, and if your client is not yet responding to it, well then do something else.

And this checklist of what to do when nothing is working. Is gonna be a bit of a game changer and a lifesaver for many of you in terms of troubleshooting on the fly, exactly how to modify your hypnotic change work. If you’re looking for more like this, I highly encourage. Join us for the next work Smart Hypnosis live and online event.

We’re kicking off on Monday, September 12th, and here’s how it works. It’s a hybrid. Online live training event, you get access to hypnotic workers as part of the program. That’s a program that sells on its own. It’s included inside of your admission and registration for work Smart hypnosis, live and online.

So the event in one way kind of becomes a guided tour through workers. Yet the reality is it’s so much more than that. Because first of all, there’s a cohost. I bring on a co-train of Dr. Richard non guard specifically for his background as a licensed mental health practitioner and then his unique, but shouldn’t still be unique approach of evidence based change.

If you’re looking to get referrals from the medical world, if you’re looking for your clients to take what you do seriously. This is the thing that you really need to be focused on these days of, not techniques that are built upon tradition, but instead techniques that are built upon proof and things that have been proven to work in clinical trials.

So it’s through my hypnotic phenomenon and conversational influence approach to change, as well as Richard’s evidence based approach. It’s where you find greater flexibility of how you can then work with your clients. And for those of you that are seeking certification, The event graduates with certification with the ic B c H, the International Certification Board of Coaches and hypnotists with members all around the world in one of the most progressive and fastest growing hypnosis organizations.

And you’ll come to know and love for those of you that joined this event that we have turned the name Oprah into a verb, uh, because we’re gonna Oprah the hell out of you. There’s all sorts of resources and honestly, it’s the event that’s become the greatest passion project in my world. Of, I’m somebody who left some incredible trainings early on, still asking, Yeah, that’s great, but how do you put it all together?

And this is where we’ve really sought to solve that puzzle, which is part of how you’ll see half of the attendance are people who are brand new to hypnosis. And this is the first training they’re going through. Meanwhile, the other half on paper have significant training, yet still kind of feel stuck.

Either troubleshooting the process on the fly, breaking away from scripted protocols or rigid techniques, and just working more interactively and creatively with your clients. So here’s the next step. Head over to Work Smart Hypnosis Live. Dot com. There’s a video at the top of the page. Watch that. You’ll see exactly how we run this a hundred hour certification event over the course of eight interactive weeks.

And you can scroll down to the page and see all the details of how you can join us right now and get immediate access to the digital libraries over at work smart hypnosis live.com. And with that, let’s dive directly into this week’s. Back into the replay vault of a presentation we did inside of the Private Workers Community Act surprise later when you hear it.

Inside of Work Smart Hypnosis, live and online in your digital library. Here we go, Session number 385. What to Do when Nothing is Working.

Before I get started, a bit of a quick. And it’s to imagine a computer and here’s a computer, but then there’s the person who is the user of that computer, and the user of the computer now loads a website they maybe shouldn’t have gone to and downloads something they shouldn’t have downloaded. They get an email they shouldn’t have opened, and they click a link they shouldn’t have clicked.

Long story short, there’s some sort of virus now on the computer, but here’s the. There’s still nothing wrong with the computer. There’s just some extra software that’s running that just needs to be cleaned up and removed, and I encourage you to think about the hypnotic change process in the same way.

There’s nothing wrong with your client. They’re just a person who happens to be going through an issue. And even better, the fact that they’ve reached out to you for help to resolve that issue means even further. That issue is not who they. So those of you that have been around neurolinguistic programming n lp, the map is not the territory.

So see your client as the identity as to who they are, and then join them to further disconnect and dissociate out. Of that old problem today is about giving you better strategies to do exactly that. Here we go. This is the hypnotic solution Formula, or a better title of this is what to do when Nothing is Working, because you might have had those moments where you’ve done everything right in your session.

You’ve maybe even used techniques that you found to be effective working with other clients. But then here’s this one anomaly where well, nothing is working. This is what today is about, to give you better strategies to troubleshoot on the fly, build greater flexibility in your work and serve your clients even better.

So here’s my promise to you. This is gonna be a quick presentation. I’m gonna keep it to be around a half an hour, if not even shorter, because I’m gonna give you actionable content. That you can use today. This stuff works. Use it right away. I’m gonna give you methods to make you even more effective at the work that you do, and to build a brand of unstoppable confidence in your hypnosis.

Which, think about it, if you were to go into your session, and even if something wasn’t quite connecting and you were now seamlessly moving over to something else, which you now know, well, this will work better. That’s what’s gonna build that greater confidence in the work that you. Because hypnosis is a tool, and I encourage you to think about the process in this way.

If I was to go buy a hammer and then try to return it with the complaint that this hammer did not work, I need a new. Well, the people at the store, they would laugh at me. The tool is only as good as we put it into use, so it’s never the mindset for me that the hypnosis even worked or didn’t work. It’s a matter of how well can you and I together use this tool to resolve your issue, Which brings about another quick story.

A guy comes into my office and he wants to stop drinking diet Coke. He’s concerned about all the chemicals and all the additives and these diet sodas, and we work together and two years go by, he doesn’t drink the coke at all, but he sees the shiny silver can and he thinks, You know what? I maybe can have just one.

It’s like three years later at this point, and he drinks it and he calls me up and he goes, You know what? It tasted like battery acid. I found it revolting, but you know, whatever. Since I had that, just. I’ve been drinking like three or four cans a week. The hypnosis stopped working. Can I come back to you?

And I had to look at that and go, It tastes revolting. It tastes like battery acid, yet you’re still drinking it. You know what? I think the hypnosis is still working. I think you are the one who stopped working. But yeah, come on and we’ll clean this up. This story is now at least six or seven years old. He hasn’t had the soda ever since I actually called him up to date to verify before I told you the story.

So today’s all about creating better success. With your clients. I’m gonna give you seven specific work smart strategies to again, become more flexible in your work and troubleshoot on the fly. And a few notes to mention here. Again, it’s a time where you maybe have done everything right, but nothing is budged.

But I want to go off on one quick soapbox here before I get into the content that the benefit of our profession is we have a lot of different schools of. And to quote Scott Sandlin, you should learn from people who disagree with each other. Here’s why there are some schools of thought that as part of their marketing would try to sell you on the idea that here is the one method that produces change and nothing else works.

And in those communities, and I say this cuz a lot of those people end up taking my trainings in those communities, they’re led to believe if someone’s not responsive to that method, it’s because the client wasn’t. To which again, there are no resistant clients. There are only inflexible practitioners. So my hope out of today is to help you to realize that sometimes just another set of techniques would produce a better result for that specific client on that specific day.

Let’s build some flexibility here. But first of all, hey. It’s good to meet you too. For those of you that don’t yet know me, I’m Jason Linett. I’m the director here of Virginia Hypnosis, an office that opened up more than 10 years ago here in Northern Virginia. The majority of clients I see nowadays are people in business launching their businesses, dealing with the confidence and the entrepreneurial mindset, which take note, that’s an interesting thing to measure the change on because that’s not a binary result.

They can tell me that they now feel more confident and we measure the success. Based on the deliverables of the public speaking and the things that they find to be even better. On the opposite side of that, I see a ton of people for stopping smoking, which is an extremely binary change process. Binary.

It’s a one or a zero. They either quit or they didn’t quit. So again, these are two very different worlds that I spend most of my time inside of where, again, you’re gonna learn the exact strategies that I’ve used with both of these categories and and many others as well to build more flexibility in the work.

Some of you may already know me because of the Work Smart Hypnosis podcast program that I’ve now done for more than six years, nearly 300 episodes, several million downloads all around the world. Interviews, teaching modules, kind of like what I’m sharing with you here today. And because of that, getting the amazing honor to do things like give the keynote at Hypno Thoughts Live a number of years ago, expanding my message into the business world.

Here’s my Ted Talk from a couple of years back though, having a successful business is one thing. It’s also important to turn the business off and go home. So there’s my wife Michelle, our kids Claire and Max. Though this is not today about showing you cute family photos to trick you into liking me. It’s about teaching you content you can absolutely use.

So let’s jump in with some hypnotic flexibility and yes, that is a photo of me cut off the man bun. Trust me on it. Okay, That’s not, Let’s create some change. Let’s get into it. Seven strategies. Let’s jump directly in strategy number one, Go compliant. And let me give you the foundation of this. There’s a mindset that I bring to the hypnotic suggestive process, compliance proceeds, suggestibility.

I need you following a set of instructions before you will ever respond to my suggestions. So if something’s not quite clicking in the hypnotic change process. I’m going to find a way to bring you into the instructional part of the process even further. The easiest way to do this is I’m going to give you an assignment.

I might record a custom audio for you, which in most cases if I do that, it’s like a little bit of a booster at the end of one of our live appointments, and I record like a eight or nine minute custom audio on your own device. If we’re meeting over Zoom, I can record on that. If you’re in the space with me, I can record on your cell phone using the voice memo app.

So I’m gonna then give you instructions to listen to that outside of the process. Similar to that too, I may teach you a technique and give you very specific instructions on when to use the technique. So if the process is not quite clicking, if nothing is working. I’m going to maybe assume that I need to bring you into the process to keep it top of mind and make you a part of the change process.

Give you something to do and hold you accountable for that. And I’ll tell you consistently, this is my go-to strategy and this is the one that works the best for me next to the hypnotic phenomenon that will talk about later. But wait, there’s more similar to this too. You know, there’s the mindset. We all often say this to our clients that you’re the one still driving the.

I’m just the gps showing you a better way to get there, and maybe because of the perception of hypnosis, they might be holding onto the idea that we’re some magical creature that can say words and fix them, which here’s the easiest way I found to negate that. I’m going to change your physicality. As simple as that sounds, it pays a massive dividend in the work that we do.

I have a big comfy recliner that moves back. I may slowly sit you upright. Everything can become a hypnotic. . And as we slowly make the chair upright, feel your mind now wrapping itself around every word that I share with you, if I really need to break you outta that passive mindset. I’ve been known to stand a client up in the middle of the session, and even in this posture, you can stand and balance that alignment and notice how your mind can now think differently about this issue.

So I’m going to physically involve you. That’s what I mean by going compliant, some bit of instruction, some bit of homework, or some bit of adjustment in the. Test it out, it’s gonna pay off a massive, massive result. But then again, sometimes we gotta go back to basics and hear me out on this, a lot of the techniques that we nerd out over as hypnotic practitioners.

Here’s the thing, there’s all sorts of clinical data proving the effectiveness of hypnosis. Head over to scholar.google.com, Search any issue along with the word hypnosis. We’ve got incredible research that backs up what we. But here’s the thing again, the techniques that you and I would get the most excited about, the things that are creative, the things that are wonderfully, you know, really, again, just that creative aspect of the, an artistic of what we do.

That’s not the stuff the clinical data is on. And, and be mindful. This is coming from the guy who uses a lot of hypnotic phenomenon and very often we’ll have my client’s arms floating as part of the therapeutic change process. But it’s where sometimes if things are not quite connecting in my process, I’m gonna go back to the basics why cuz it works.

That’s why we have this clinical data we’re so much of that research is based upon direct suggestion hypnosis and a progressive muscle relaxation induction. And it. Works. So if there’s ever a moment where things are not quite collect, connecting, I’ll ask myself, How can I simplify this? And go back to the basics and stand on the research that backs up what we do.

So go back to basics, but then again, here’s another strategy, which is, well, another style go. Another style. And again, think about this, There are categories in the work of what we do as hypnosis practitioners. So if I suddenly said, Parts therapy. Well, parts therapy is a category, and there’s the popular Roy Hunter, Charles TE’s variation of parts therapy.

But then again, there’s also core transformation, which has some parts, therapy aspects to it. There’s a six step reframe, which is basically a parts therapy approach. There’s the way that I do parts therapy, which is a double arm hypnotic phenomenon, levitation into a hand. You’d have to see it to understand it, but it’s where these are all different variations upon the same theme.

So it doesn’t mean if the parts therapy of this one model isn’t connecting, I have to abandon ship and not use that technique. This is where having that requisite learning, having the experience of different trainers over the years, this is why I keep reading books and buying courses myself, where if this model isn’t working, I can do parts therapy like this other person, like this other person, or change it up from.

Here’s a bit of a breakthrough thought that I had a number of years ago too, which is that sometimes. We do an entire process. What I mean by that is consider hypnotic age regression, which again, another style we can regress to a theoretical cause and clean up the past. But then again, we can also regress to positive experiences and draw out resources and use that to build an empowered anchor to propel into the outcome.

That’s how I most often do regression. They’re both the same. It’s a matter of how we put it to use, but then again, there’s some moments where we don’t have to do the entire process. Sometimes we could run a process as a theme. Here’s what I mean by this. And I’m gonna make the judgment sometimes based on the severity of the issue, where rather than the, uh, affect bridge off the emotion into the revivification of the problem.

I’m talking high level stuff here. Then the relearning, then the reintegration, then the future pacing, then the future pacing vi. This is a lot of steps inside of one technique that we call regression. Well, sometimes I might just do this. And go ahead through the comfort of those closed eyes, allow yourself to go back in time and space and relive as many senses and memories as you could with the perceptions now as the adult that you are with all the knowledge and understanding that you have here today, as if you had this greater knowledge back then, as if you never had to take on these problems in the first place.

Allow yourself to run the sort of antivirus software of the mind to clean up the past, to make you ready to move into tomorrow. And as you’re ready to do that knowledge your head yes. So I. , What was that? Like 45 seconds rather than three or four sessions of hypnotic age regression. And no, it’s not to say that I think one is better than the other.

It’s instead variations upon a theme. Now you’ve got greater options. There we go. That’s another style. But then again, here’s another choice. Sometimes we need to take a step back and look at the core elements of what we’re addressing and go behavioral. Here’s the best way to explain this. I get a phone call from a local hypnotist, help me out.

I’m seeing somebody. She says she has a sugar addiction and she’s stuck with three sessions and nothing is working. To which of course I have to ask, what have you done so far? And he goes, Well, we’re working on this event when, um, her father and her had an argument when she was like 18, 19 years old. You know, there was no abuse, nothing too traumatic, but she hasn’t yet forgiven her father of this event and she won’t let go of it.

What do you think I should do? And my response honestly was, help her with the sugar thing. She hired you to help her. and he goes, Do you think that should work? And I go, It’s kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? So they do the session, he goes back to basics, deepens her in hypnosis, talks about new positive choices she can make, rather than the old, useless, unnecessary behavior problem was gone.

This is a bit of a challenging thought to some people, uh, respectfully. Her father could have been to use clinical terminology, the biggest, a-hole in the wor world. We censored it slightly here. Father could still be that jerk, but it’s no reason why she has to eat all that sugar. So this is a profound statement, I know to some of you, but I’m gonna start the process with my client working on the issue that they hired me to address.

I know, right? Profound statement. But for those of you that have been in this industry for quite some time, sometimes just starting with those basic tenants, addressing those behaviors is really all that we need for that. Another cool strategy, here’s a technique I use all the time, and I’ll give you the setup to it.

You know, some people say it takes 30 days to install a new behavior. I would tell you those people might not be using the best of methods cuz even Dr. Ivan Pavlov, he’d feed the dogs, he’d ring a. Feed the dogs, ring a bell, feed the dogs, ring a bell. And over time, the dogs would respond to the sound of the bell with the expectation they were about to be fed.

We can do that in hypnosis even faster, that we’re going to rapidly condition these new behaviors to be there as if that’s what you’ve always done. And the simple way that I do that is a standard concept called perceptual positions where imagine you’re watching a movie of yourself now doing the thing you want to do.

And once you’ve done that float inside of. Experience it in your own eyes, ears and body. Feel it from the inside. Mentally. Rehearse your own success. Play that out through to the end. Float outside of it. Watch it again. Notice what’s different now that you’ve done it for yourself. And just play with that perceptual position back and forth.

And the languaging is very much the mindset of as if that’s what you’ve always done. Which is a side note, if you have a client who has a concern about a specific upcoming experience, I don’t know if I’m not gonna be able to smoke when I’m around my relatives. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to pet that dog once I get rid of this fear.

Well, this is the strategy I use to go ahead and write that new sequencing of the mind to let that become normal. Watch it, observe it, float inside of it, experience it, toggle it back and forth like maybe 10 times. And just, you know, elicit that response and play with that reality though. Then again, sometimes things are an emotional issue, which makes sense to now go emotional.

I upgraded my stock photo, uh, account. Can you tell? So here’s what I mean by this. You can branch off of the emotion. Now, this is also a place where I may sometimes get playful with the communication with my client. . Best example, the guy says, You know, it’s weird. I only ever bite my nails when I’m anxious.

To which I go, Do you mind if I ask you a bit of a creative question? What would be different for you about this behavior once we take that anxiety down, which is now building the mental expectation that that’s what we’re gonna do? And we did. He goes, Oh, I wouldn’t bite my nails at all. To which I go, You wanna see something kind of cool from this point forward?

We’re not gonna talk about your nail. At all today, we’re only going to address that emotional reaction and just keep track of exactly what you noticed to be so different as a result of what we’re about to do. Sound good? He says, Yes, I’ve got buy in. Good. Close your eyes. All we did was dial it down.

Control room metaphor was really the bulk of the work in that session. Next week, he’s in front of me, hasn’t bitten the nails at all. So again, isolate the emotion and just work on that. Notice what happens with. Appropriate leading language all around it too. That being said, I’ll share a bit of a, my model of the.

you could be the most anxious person in the world if you wanted to. I don’t recommend it, but you could , and that doesn’t have to be any reason why that behavior’s there. So you could have the most challenging of mental things going on, but it’s no reason why you have to smoke. So a few pointed sort of slight of mouth conversational influence statements around the process can further disconnect the behavior from the emotion as well.

If that was part of the. But then again, if you think about it, every issue our client would be facing is something that’s kinesthetic in quality. It’s a feeling that they’re experiencing them, which is telling them a thought and the mind to then reach out and say, Help me address this. So, so often just to go into the esthetics of the issue, which I’ll tell you how right now, some of you might be familiar with submodality.

Submodalities is a technique out of nlp, which is all about the breaking down of reality into the individual building blocks. Here’s what I mean by this. You could go into a room and if you asked a hundred people in that room, how do you feel? A hundred of those people may respond that they feel anxious and fearful, which let that be your first cue to get the heck out of that room.

But then again, if you ask those a hundred or so people, what does that feel? Now that you’ve asked that descriptive question, now you’re gonna get a hundred different descriptions. And as simple as this sounds, is really as simple as it becomes. What does that feel like? You jot down the description. It’s this tight feeling in my chest, like a knot that’s bound up in the session.

What do you now do? You unravel their metaphors. It feels like it’s caving. Well, now you talk about it expanding like sunlight spreading and becoming warm and comfortable. So you take whatever their building blocks of reality are and reverse them through standard hypnotic, direct suggestion work as simple as that.

Which by the way, if I see someone for hypnotic pain relief, this is like all that I do. What does that feel like? How would you rather that feel? And that’s what the meet the scripting of my session actually becomes, though I mentioned earlier, bumping up the compliance is my go-to strategy. This is the main one.

I focus on that of going phenomenal. Now this is gonna sound negative, but hear me out. Back to the computer metaphor, The fact that they’re reaching out to me for help means that they are identifying that that problem that they’re facing is not who they are. We can say the person themselves is not broken, but the issue itself is something that needs to be fixed and based on that language is languaging is theoretically broken.

This is stuff inside of my head. So therefore, if they’re hiring a hypnotist, they are looking for someone to further disconnect, break, interrupt that false reality, to introduce either a new one or clear away the haze and fog and see things as they really are. This is my perception as to the role that we.

As hypnotists. Therefore, this is why I am such a big proponent of the use of magical moments in our work hypnotic phenomenon where, think about it, The moment where the client is looking at their arm eyes open, hypnotic phenomenon, and they can’t bend that thing, their perception of the world has now shifted that they can experience something differently than the way that they did it before.

We’re harnessing what’s called hyper suggest. Here’s the languaging that I use for that. They’re in that arm lock. And close your eyes and decide for yourself what this means for you in terms of your ability to let go of fill in the blank issue. And as you allow this change to be complete, notice now how easily that arm can begin to lower down slowly.

So I’m not just using the hypnotic phenomenon as a hypno. That you could, I’m using it as integrated as part of the change process, which these are the moments that create that raving fan base for referrals. These are the moments that build that conviction that they were actually hypnotized. And again, it’s this whole mindset that if you follow my instructions, we can create some really unique experiences, which means we can create that new.

So this is an extension about going compliant. I’m gonna bring you into the process even further and let you experience things differently than you ever have before, which means this change, I got this. This is gonna be easy. So there you go. Seven workable strategies, and my request to you is put this stuff to use.

And here’s the strategy that brings it all together. Let’s bring it on home here. When you’re talking to your clients, here’s the phrasing that I recommend. If you’re talking to them at the next appointment or on the phone with them in advance of the next session, Hey, I wanted to check in to see how well things are going.

What are the biggest changes that you’ve noticed? Notice that’s a more positive based question. I’m not calling up and going, Did it? Huh. Cool. Really ? No. I wanted to check in to see how well things are going. What are you responding to the most? And then after that is what I’ll ask the next question, which is that, hey, we’re meeting this, this Friday.

What else needs to be addressed? What other little bits and pieces need to be cleaned up? Which the benefit of this now makes it so well sometimes as we’re working with our clients, life happens. Things get in the way, which we can. They be there immediately to reframe that moment by simply calling out that.

Cool. I’m sorry to hear that you had to go through that yet. The benefit is now we get to address it while we’re still in process. Would it be helpful if I gave you a strategy, go compliant? Would it be helpful? I gave you a strategy so that even if you notice some hint of that old. You could take it down yourself.

Would that be helpful? And now we’re back into process. We’re framing everything as a win this way. Yes, indeed. We can supercharge our hypnosis outstanding stock photos. I know, because the whole mindset of this is about eradicating that old issue of I felt relaxed. But I don’t know if I was hypnotized.

Jason, Linett here once again. And as always, thank you so much for interacting with this program, sharing it in your ongoing conversations in our amazing hypnosis community. And again, head over to work smart hypnosis live.com. Watch the video at the top of the page for the entire tour. Of the Work Smart Hypnosis Live and online hybrid training program.

See all the details, Hear the success stories on the page. Join us now. Work smart hypnosis live.com. Thanks for listening to the Work Smart Hypnosis Podcast and work smart hypnosis.com.